Page 10
Tuesday, November 30, 1982
Daily Nebraskan
TTf ' it - t
An evening of mice
without any men
Vos,
Wrote you a small novel. Drove clear out here to
leave it in your car and realized I had left it at home.
But lobotomy cases are born every day, and I am here
to keep that status quo.
Anyway, here I sit in my car, windshield wipers
going, writing my second novel of the .night, listen
ing to "Nobody" on the radio and thanking God
that your right window doesn't roll up all the way.
(You really should get that fixed.)
There is a mouse in my kitchen.
1 moved the stove and tipped over the refrigerator,
but he, she, him (whatever it was) ran someplace else.
fj T. Marni Vos
I can't get my refrigerator right side up. Jell-o
and chicken soup are running all over the floor and I
keep smelling gas.
I called my landlord. He reminded me that pets
are not allowed and suggested a mousetrap (that
crazy guy).
I'm now reading "for rent" ads and feeling rather
insecure and alone. . .Well, not necessarily alone, I
mean there's me and "Mickey" but other than that. . .
If you're going to study tonight or if you'd like to
just get together and read "Of Mice and Men" by
Steinbeck, we could maybe get together, say, at
your place.
Do you think if I called NIMH they could give me
a little information on mice?
I know that mice have a reputation for always
freaking out most women and causing them to jump
on the closest chair screaming, "eek. eek." Last year,
a friend of mine spent 45 minutes bouncing from a
kitchen stool to the dinette set. to the coat closet, to
the front door.
Although I walked at a moderate pace) out the
front door, I understand that if mice taste blood,
they'll attack and on occasion have been known to
cat people or at least small Chihuahuas. I will not re
turn to my apartment to clean up the Jell-o and
chicken soup without an MI 6.
I don't know, the whole evening has brought a
new meaning to Agatha Christie's movie. "Mouse
trap." What I need tonight is Christopher Reeve. But
I can't find his car and chances are his right window
rolls up all the way. so how 'bout meeting me in my
garage after your rehearsals. We'll cat cheese and
crackers, look for stray cats and discuss alternative
maneuvers.
Peg
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Courtesy of Jostyn Art Museum
'The Departure for the Fields," by Jules Breton
Breton,
By David Wood
The I
Jules Breton was born May 1, 1827, in the agricultur
ally ricH Artois region in northern France. He became a
honored painter, wrote two autobiographies, two books
of art criticism and two volumes of poetry and was
admired by his contemporaries, Vincent van Gogh,
Victor Hugo and the leading statesman of France's Third
Republic, Leon Gambetta. During his lifetime, he was one
of France's most respected artists. He died in 1906.
The first major retrospective of the forgotten artist's
works ever to be gathered is on display at Joslyn art
Museum in Omaha. The exhibition will run through Jan.
Art Review
Artists filled the role of cameras before photography
was developed. Artists haven't always been the free
spirited individuals who we may picture today. The
stereotypic artist today shuns conventions that might
compromise personal style and expression. Sometimes,
being an artist is an artist's best work. Inventiveness is
crucial to modern art, and convention is scoffed at.
Many artists consciously try to disregard what has gone
before. Many exist outside of society. But it hasn't always
been that way.
Artists once only worked inside society. Art was a
trade, and artists were craftsmen for hire. Fine art was
that which the upper-class elite deemed fine art. It is still
rather that way, yet art isn't as institutionalized as once
it was, thanks largely to French painters in the last half
of the 19th century.
Late 19th-century France happens to be the world
Breton painted in. But he wasn't one of the renegade
't traditionalist
artists that banded together and thwarted the establish
ment exhibitions, or Salons, by spawning galleries of
their own. Breton's work hung with the establishment's.
He wasn't an impressionist, post-impressionist or pre
modernist. Breton painted in what Joslyn is calling "the
French rural tradition."
Calling Breton an establishment, or beaux arts, artist
isn't to demean his work, which is beautiful. It is only
to account for art history's passing him over. He is
indeed a great painter from late 19th-century France, but
late 19th-century France was home to more momentous
artists than any other country in any other time.
Throughout his life, Breton exclusively painted quiet,
composed tableaus of country life, resplendent with
sunlight and atmospheric effects, bursting with the
bounty of a healthy life and land. He glorified the agri
cultural, village existence, which at the time enjoyed
unprecedented prosperity.
As a young man, Breton studied art in Belgium for
three years, honing his skills as a fine draftsman. At the
Antwerp museum, he became familiar with the Flemish
masters, who very much impressed him. In 1847, he
returned to Paris and finished his schooling at the Ecole
de Beaux Arts.
He took no part in the bloody Revolution of February
1848. But early paintings showed a sympathy for the
impoverished masses. His painting of an emaciated woman
gripping her child while her husband prepared to leave
for war, "Want and Despair," won Breton entrance into
the Salon for the first time.
But his excursion into social protest was short-lived.
He moved into landscape painting before developing his
compositions of peasant women and rustic scenes,
which are as modeled and perfect as classic sculpture
and which were his crowning achievement as the last
great traditionalist.
It is an achievement that art-lovers shouldn't forget
too quickly. Kudos to Joslyn.
'Chatterley's Lover' good but not what it could be
By David Wood
Prior to Henry Miller, D.H. Lawrence
addressed sex more flagrantly than any
serious novelist to write in the English
language. In ways, he was decades before
his time, a harbinger of the sexual revolu
tion. AD in all, it's remarkable that no major
Hollywood movie has ever been made
jj David
Wood
1
from the most famous of Lawrence's
erotic works, "Lady Chatterley's Lover."
The "Lady Chatterley's Lover" showing
at Plaza 4 Theatres is joint British
French production. Itll only be showing
until Thursday, probably because it is
foreign.
It was filmed on location near the coal
regions of England where the novel was
set and Lawrence once lived. In and of
itself, it's a fine film. It's pictorally lush.
It has a grand plot. It's sensuous. The
actors and actresses look their parts and
have some talent. The budget was
generous, the costuming fastidious and
the scenery splendiferous. The trees were
great, absolutely great. But a question
remains: Was this a good cinematic
adaption of the book?
the question may seem hypercritical,
something with nothing to do with the
sheer entertainment value of the movie.
Yet the title alone is enough to set up
viewer expectation. Whether you've read
it or not, "Lady Chatterley's Lover"
connotes classic romance. And if natural
expectations are disappointed, the question
is no longer academic.
The basic plot Is this. Sir Clifford
Chatterley (played by Shane Brlant)
is a coal-rich baron of industry In the
late 1910s. He owns the land, business
and people around his palatial estate.
But a shell fragment severs his spine
in World War I, and he returns paralyzed
below the waist, "half a man."
Thus his wife Connie (Sylvia Kristel)
can never bear the Chatterley heir or
satisfy her yearning flesh. She's encouraged
to take i lover and does. He's the grounds
gamekeeper, Oliver Mellors (Nicholas
Clay).
For the lady to take a man from the
bottom class to be father of the bastard
heir Is an inexcusable breach of upper
class dignity. Sir Clifford finds out and
soon.
The film treats the Issue of classism as
a plot complication and historical color,
when actually the issue is central to under
standing the motivations and conflicts
inside and between Cliff, Connie and
Mellors.
Obviously, Lawrence's nation and times
were more sensitive to class than we
modern Americans are. And of course,
the film's intent was to crop the novel
into a romance, not a social or historical
documentary. Regardless, some of the
soul of Lawrence's characters got lost
In the translation.
This is as deep as it gets. Regarding the
masses, Cliff says, "What are they but
what they do for us? They have no res
pect for who we are. They respect what
we haw. "
Film is two-dimensional in a couple of
ways. Almost every cinematic adaptation
must flatten a piece of literature, making
it less deep.
Indeed, Lawrence's "Lady Chatterley'i
Lover" could be leaner than it is. Lots
of the philosophizing on carnal matters
in the book was cut out for the movie.
It's fine to lose the rhetoric, but more
bed-talk than there was would Ve helped
articulate the characters.
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