In pearly grays the stars of my parents’ day Climb pixels of noir stairwells, in my haven. Or, shades of my own time: luminous Mastroianni The gay broadcaster fired by Fascisti , radiant Loren the betrayed and worn-down mother of six. It’s the day Hitler arrives by train to Rome.
The movie shows real newsreels. Evil characters Never scared me—desirous Joan Fontaine A sly killer in “Ivy,” Charles Laughton breeding Human-animals in “The Island of Lost Souls,” Monsters, velociraptors. It’s the joyful faces In certain crowd scenes that can make me hide Or hide my eyes at something deeper than art.
The right-wing hip-hop star makes me remember My mother teaching us kids about the bad Or good politics of actors. Adolphe Menjou Was bad, Edward G. Robinson was good.
Did it ever matter? Did Maurice Chevalier Collaborate with Nazis, or not? For her, His haircut settled the question. In “A Special Day” The gay announcer is about to kill himself When he meets the donna-madre . They make love While her whole family and their casa popolare Neighbors are at the station with balloons and flags To welcome Hitler embracing Mussolini.
And were the actors too beautiful for the story To hurt enough? They even dance a tentative, Halting rumba, awkward in a doomed refuge..