Musings. Ex Libris

The traveller set out just before the break of dawn, when the streets were largely deserted, save a few somnambulists, who roamed aimlessly about, still in the midst of a dogged pursuit of reclaiming their fugitive dreams. As customary before every journey, he looked cautiously up. The sky, which was yet liberated totally from the dark spell of night, had on him a peculiar attraction. His initial dread of the unknown was overridden by a mounting feeling of ease and security; the mists that cast seamlessly over the sky were to him the wings that ensured his anonymity; even his solitude seemed less palpably felt. Not a trace of clouds was visible in the mistbound heaven. Although he fancied he saw, hanging at the furthest end of the perceivable distance, a faint glimpse of a big, bright sun. Blood red. Quite unexpectedly she appeared, nipping her way to a point of unknown. Her gait was nimble as a hare, but at points hastening like that of an escapee, desperate to put off sce...

The life and ruin of me, The Serpent- I grasp at your immortality in my failing memory. Numerous conquests far and wide, Enchanted by your poisonous spell; Drunk to draught the liqueur of lust from your bottomless well. Deftly you dallied with their pilgrim love- hearts and souls that writhed and twined. The incessant sighs of desire that conceals the hisses of ruthless vice. Your serpentine ways succeeded the deceiving- both the foolish and the wise. To no avail could they make their reasons just, Why they thrashed still in your perfidious love. I was too lured in by your sinuous incantation- A voluntary prisoner, Neglected in my chronic incarceration. Lethe runs in my blood every time you smote my lips your frosty kiss. Germinating in my gullible heart a love seed that never blossomed. The withered flower of that counterfeited love- my blindness, now I come to think of it, so wretched and brazen! But one day your venom cleared my eyes a...

Psycho is in a class of its own; its brilliance insuperable by many. Released in 1960, in the wake of a spate of successful films, Alfred Hitchcock made Psycho as if it were his last, foregoing the wry humour and beguiling romance that set the tone of his previous films, and favouring the clinically menacing. Such bold and drastic departure from the familiar Hitchcock bent yielded a result that continues to fascinate and astound its viewers decades after its release, and is indisputably the paramount of horror films, with many filmmakers strove to follow its example and consequently failed. Pioneering a new genre called the “slasher film” without too heavily depending on the gratuitous violence and gore, Hitchcock evokes the old school horror, the preoccupation of which is a mixture of psychology and suspense. The film promises no let-up on its shuddering excitement; the audience’s breath is held bated from start to finish. One important factor of its success is that it plum...

Written in the 1920s, when mobsters were a constant scourge to America’s society, “The Killers,” though containing no more than 3,000 words, reflects palpably the spine-chilling horror and relentless hostility that accompany such organised crime. The novella bears testament to Ernest Hemingway’s unparalleled genius, in that the author’s penchant for laconicness creates the most timeless of beauty. It is a bracing thriller that comprises barely any descriptions of the incident but short, impetuous, unnervingly comical conversations between the characters. Hemingway’s purposely-designed ending- the built-up towards the final climax is perfectly dismantled by a wanting of dénouement- is the prime example of a great suspense. In a 1947 film directed by Robert Siodmak, Hemingway’s story becomes a point of departure whereon screenwriter Anthony Veiller appropriates the authorial voice and fills the audience in of the reason an ex-boxer, an outstanding debut from Burt Lancaster, is t...

One of the few attractions of Bonjour Tristesse (1958), a half-baked domestic parable by Otto Preminger, is Jean Seberg, then still on the cusp of young adulthood, whose performance in the film had made such an abiding impression on Jean-Luc Godard that he intended her for the seminal À bout de souffle (1960). Seberg was gifted with the kind of face that made her easily adaptable to a wide range of characters of varying natures. There was, however, one type of role that she could never attempt with convincing effect- a guileless maiden. No, her beauty was never wide-eyed. In Bonjour Tristesse especially her contrived precocity takes the hue of slyness, which is often symptomatic of one’s barely contained rebellious streak. A rebellious youth though she is, and admittedly a quite foolish one as it transpires, there is something rather poignant about Seberg’s Cecile that moves one to hedge one’s rash criticism. She is a miserable girl- only a few minutes into the film and the...