Larisa Shepitko

Criterion's Eclipse releases films that the curators feel have been unjustly neglected.  About half the time, or maybe a third, I think they're right; the rest in my opinion fall into the "justly neglected" category -- but, a worthy endeavor, and of course one man's stinker is another's masterwork.   

The Eclipse re-release of Shepitova's 1966 Wings is one of the good ones -- very good indeed.  Celebrated WWII pilot Nadia Petrukhina (Maya Bulgakova) finds herself, twenty years later, principal of a vocational college and provincial Soviet functionary.  Like Fellini's protagonists in il Bidone and Dolce Vita, she is discovering, unwillingly, that her inner life has shrivelled.  Bulgakova is in almost every shot:  she has the face, and she is enough of an actress, to carry the film, brilliantly -- you can't take your eyes off her.

Christopher Duffy on Frederick II of Prussia:

In 1768 Frederick raised the peace establishment to 161,000 troops, and the annexation of West Prussia in 1772 made it possible for him to increase this figure to some 190,000, which made the Prussian army the third largest in Europe after Austria (297,000) and Russia (224,000). The character of the army had by then undergone a profound change, which was the consequence of the strictness, amounting almost to contempt and hatred, which Frederick displayed towards his officers and men. Frederick believed that only harsh measures were capable of restoring discipline, and Curt Jany detects the work­ing of the Seven Years War on the king's character: 'His judgments of men became harder and more bitter, and their inner qualities became of less interest to him' (Jany, 1903, 9). The army which had been destroyed in the war was effectively the one he had inherited from his father. The army of Frederick the Great, properly speaking, came into existence only from 1763, and it was to be inferior in almost every respect to its predecessor.  (emphasis added, Kurtz.)

from Mr. Clemens:

SUSY: You must know a wonderful deal, Papa.

MT:  I have that reputation -- in Europe; but here the best minds think I am superficial. However, I am content; I make no defense; my pictures show what I am.

SUSY: Papa, I should think you would take pupils.

MT:  No, I have no desire for riches. Honest poverty and a con­science torpid through virtuous inaction are more to me than corner lots and praise.

The only piece of Popper I ever liked:

In commenting on the relationship of evidence and theory in the study of history, Karl Popper wrote that although facts are collected with an eye upon the theory, and will confirm it as long as the theory stands up to these tests, they are more than merely a kind of empty repetition of a preconceived theory. They confirm the theory only if they are the results of unsuccessful attempts to overthrow its predictions, and therefore a telling testimony in its favor. So it is, I hold, the possibility of overthrowing it, or its falsifiability, that constitutes the possibilit y of testing it, and therefore the scientific character of a theory; and the fact that all tests of a theory are attempted falsifications of predictions derived with its help, furnishes the

clue to scientific rnethod.<sup>69

(quoted in David Henige, Niumbers From Nowhere.)</sup>