Hello and welcome to the very first day of August on this Saturday. Today is August 1st, folks, so make the most of it because school's right around the corner.
The current Oldest in our house loves stories. Books, movies, YouTube shorts, graphic novels, anime, even writing her own short comic strips - she inhales them all with a seriousness and earnest fervor that sometimes leaves me a little breathless. She dives into her imagination with both feet and lands on solid ground that sets her on all kinds of journeys. One of them includes following the life and career of actor Lex Barker.
According to her in-depth internet research, Lex Barker was an American actor. He was 6 feet, 4 inches tall. He had five wives and three children and was 54 when he died. He was in over 50 movies from 1945 to 1973, most notably the popular German film series Vinnetou.
A rabbit hole worth going down is revisiting the Remembering Vinnetou post I wrote for the Almanac on March 30th, 2019. This trip down memory lane has a cute picture of our Vinnetou-loving sweetheart emulating her favorite character Rybana at that time.
Now that she's moved into her teens, this girl's new fascination is with the handsome Old Shatterhand. Over the winter months, she rewatched all of the Vinnetou movies, then decided she wanted to watch all of Lex Barker's movies in order.
The first of Barker's movies is a 1947 film called The Farmer's Daughter, about a girl who wants to be a nurse but she doesn't have the money so she works for this rich family as a maid. The whole family is made up of politicians, so they talk about politics all the time. The girl knows alot about politics, and has her own opinions and she shares them with the family. The family agrees with her and tells her she should run for Congress. Barker plays one of the girl's brothers and he supports her. I'll leave you with that cliffhanger and an invitation to watch it for free on YouTube here.
"I thought it was pretty good. It was interesting," the at-home Oldest said. Aside from the storyline, Barker "didn't talk very much or get much scenery. And it was strange hearing him speak English because I'm so used to his German and Czech voice-overs."
The second film, also a 1947 hit, Crossfire, took a bit more hunting. To her credit, our daughter went to the public library, by herself, and requested the film, on her own, for the DVD via interlibrary loan. (I ask you, what early teen does this?)
If you're familiar with interlibrary loans, you won't be surprised to hear that she requested it in June and received it just a week ago.
Coming off a fast-paced, intense, and long fair week, as a family, we all looked forward to slower, cooler, and quieter days at home watching a little telly this week. While admittedly, I tend towards snubbing older films for being, well, old, I wanted to support my child's current fascination with this actor and pulled out my knitting needles to get some more rows done on this Irish sweater (by Christmas!) while I did her a mom solid.
Crossfire started out as a classic whodunnit. Who killed Samuels? Lex Barker had a tertiary role - one of the soldier buddies. The teen squealed and jumped around the room yelling. "There he is! Oh my GOSH!" as if she'd just seen one of the Beatles (which she had back in the fall with her dad.)
I worked through my knits and purls, politely listening to the film, waiting for the killer to be revealed in typical, trope-y fashion. And then the film took a hard right. None of the suspects knew Samuels. None had a hard motive. If that was the case, then really, who did kill Samuels? I set down my knitting needles and tuned in with full attention.
While I don't want to give away the ending (you can get the DVD via interlibrary loan), what I will tell you, is that the film had an anti-semitic theme, which I found fascinating, considering it was released in 1947, just after World War II. This film went on to receive 8 award nominations, winning 7, including the Cannes Film Festival award for best social film. Afterwards, we even watched a short interview with the film director, who talked about the choice to make a film such as this at that time.
Another ear-catching line that surprised me - and remember, this was 1947: "Look, Leroy, you know we have a law against carrying a gun? […] Well, we have that law because a gun is dangerous. Well, hate — [The killer's] kind of hate — is like a gun. If you carry it around with you, it can go off and kill somebody.”
Which just goes to show that some themes are never outdated, even if the film was made 80 years ago in black and white.
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