There are many examples online of stories about “things found in books“. It’s a particularly appealing topic for booksellers, because of the added interest of a kind of lottery fever. For example, we once considered purchasing a large lot of books from an ex-seller who tried to sweeten the deal by talking about the crisp $50 bill he had found in one of the piles of unsorted books he had for sale. We ultimately passed.
In keeping with more prosaic finds, I wanted to share a newspaper clipping I recently found in an Updike reprint.
It’s a clipping of a film review from the “lively arts” section of the Montreal Gazette, circa 1966.
The film in question is “The Serpent“, a Swedish film directed by Hans Ambramson—and despite being a onetime film school nerd, I’ve never heard of it. (Anyone who wants to leap in to claim that “Ormen” is some kind of masterpiece, feel free in the comments. For that matter, please feel free to tell me if it’s terrible.)
I’m captivated by author, Jacob Siskind’s impassioned defence of The Serpent against censors who had banned the film in Montreal. Apparently the sticking point is a scene of attempted rape that contains nothing more lascivious than “…the petting sequences in the Hollywood beach films.”
Not having seen the film, I’m loath to fully agree with Siskind, but he seems to make a solid point, despite the use of the word “petting”. I’m congenitally opposed to censorship in most cases anyway. However, another thing that gave me pause about this clipping was the section of ads still attached.
The three films listed: Is Paris Burning?, Doctor Zhivago and Sound of Music are all now (rightly or wrongly) considered classic films. Did Siskind see these films as exceptional or did he revile them as commercial dross?
What commercial product in today’s multiplexes might be considered classic thirty years from now? And what art house films will be completely forgotten?
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