Author: Ben Parman

  • Black Narcissus

    Black Narcissus

    Telling someone about a dream is akin to telling them about a physical ailment — no one actually cares — so I’ll keep it short. I had a dream, during the writing of this review; I was sitting with a friend on the high point of a park, overlooking the landscape. “It would be more…

  • The Country Girl

    The Country Girl

    “We would rather be ruined than changed,” wrote W.H. Auden. “We would rather die in our dread than climb the cross of the present and let our illusions die.”* As an addict, especially a recovering addict, yes, Auden, I would prefer attempting to build with ruins than build upon the rock. The rock is hard. So,…

  • Stevie

    Stevie

    If a play were to be written based on my life – baseless idea as that is – but if the thing were to be done, I’d probably ask for Hugh Whitemore. There is not another playwright of his ability: the detail of a historian, the brevity of a poet, the ambition of a novelist.…

  • A Child Is Waiting

    A Child Is Waiting

    The opening title sequence of A Child Is Waiting is a series of striking children’s drawings, primal and observant, done with the pencil pressed hard. At the end of it, the camera pushes in on a picture of a black cloud, not unlike the shape of a brain, that dissolves into a close up of…

  • Seven Days in May

    Seven Days in May

    “The writer’s role is to menace the public’s conscience,” Rod Serling, the adaptor of Seven Days in May, addressed the Congress in 1968. “He must have a position, a point of view. He must see the arts as a vehicle of social criticism…”* Serling’s vehicle was a bulldozer, through which he endeavored to level the…

  • Paris Is Burning

    Paris Is Burning

    Paris is Burning struck its match when director Jennie Livingston was walking through Washington Square and stopped to watch a group of young men voguing. They invited her to a drag ball. At the time Livingston was “sniffing around” for a documentary subject, but once she got a noseful of the ball, she got addicted.…

  • The Secret Life of Walter Mitty

    The Secret Life of Walter Mitty

    From the start, I must acknowledge the Ben in the review. Not me. Though I am here. Hi there. No, I must acknowledge the other Ben. Ben Stiller. If you are a fan of Stiller – you clicked the wrong link, ‘bye now – or if you are just a fan of movies – you…

  • Watch on the Rhine

    Watch on the Rhine

    “In the first week of April 1940 there were few men in the world who could have believed that, in less than three months, Denmark, Norway, Belgium, Holland and France would fall to the German invaders. But there were some men, ordinary men, not prophets, who knew this mighty tragedy was on the way. They…

  • Far From Heaven

    Far From Heaven

    For me, the most wonderful time of year is not the end of November to the end of December, but the end of September to the end of October. The feverish flush of trees, the swells of wind, sunsets that smear across the sky; it is a parade, all the more gorgeous because it is…

  • Last Holiday

    Last Holiday

    “Pity The Blind,” the sign entreats, hung around the neck of a violinist, his eyes closed, as he plays a poignantly displacing melody; the notes are fitful and accepting, braided into a single cord that pulls you, meekly, steadily. This will be the key to Last Holiday, but we don’t know it yet. We also…