Today would have been Marlon Brando’s 94th birthday so it seems appropriate that today’s music video should be for a song that was, at least partially, inspired by Marlon Brando’s career!
In 2014 interview, Scott Walker explained the idea behind this song, saying that he found that there were several movies that features scenes of Marlon Brando being physically assaulted. Along with detailing some of the assaults that Brando suffered on screen, the song serves as a tribute to sadomasochism in general.
In the third verse, there are several references to Brando’s films. First there’s mention of Brando getting beat up by John Saxon in The Appaloosa. “I took it from dad” is probably a reference to One-Eyed Jacks, the only film that Brando ever directed. Fat Johnny Friendly was the racketeer played by Lee J. Cobb in On The Waterfront while the three vigilantes are a reference to Brando’s role in The Chase. “I took it for The Wild One” is obviously a reference to the film of the same name. As “Lizbeth,” that’s presumably a reference to Elizabeth Taylor, who beat Brando with a riding crop in Reflections in a Golden Eye.
On Sunday night, my family and I ended our Easter Sunday by watching Jesus Christ Superstar Live. Now, before I say anything else about NBC’s latest live musical production, there are a few things that I should make clear:
In college, there was this girl in my dorm who started the semester as a pagan, spent a month as an evangelical, and then ended the semester as a pagan again. When she was going through her evangelical phase, she would listen to the Jesus Christ Superstar soundtrack constantly, with the volume turned up so loud that you could hear it up and down the hallway. Seriously. 24 hours a day. 7 days a week. After three days, I was sick of hearing it. I found myself wondering if anyone had ever been driven to murder over having to listen to Heaven On Their Minds one too many times. Fortunately, something happened to cause her to once again lose her faith and she went back to listening to Fall Out Boy.
For quite some time afterward, I would instinctively cringe whenever I heard any of the songs from Jesus Christ Superstar. In fact, it wasn’t until I first came across the 1973 film version that I was able to once again appreciate it as a musical and overlook its association with that annoying pagan. From the first time I watched it, I really liked that movie and, every time I rewatch it, I like it even more. When I started watching Sunday’s production, I was seriously wondering if I’d be able to set aside my feelings about both the pagan and the movie and judge the television version on its own merits.
Well, I shouldn’t have worried. While I still prefer the original film version, Sunday’s television production was wonderfully conceived and executed. From the first note of music to the final curtain call, Jesus Christ Superstar Live In Concert captured my attention and refused to let it go, keeping me watching even through the lengthy commercial interruptions. The musicians and the singers sounded great, or at least they did once the audience mics were turned down. (At the start of the show, the audience was so loud that they threatened to drown out Heaven On Their Minds.) The production design was simply amazing, combining downtown New York with ancient Judea in a way that reminded us just how timeless the musical’s story truly is. (The 1973 film opened with a bunch of hippies driving through the desert. The 2018 production opened with Jesus’s name being spray painted on a wall. Both openings felt perfect for the story that was being told.)
As for the cast, Brandon Victor Dixon was compellingly intense as Judas and Norm Lewis was properly intimidating as Caiaphas. The big marquee name was Alice Cooper, who obviously enjoyed playing the production’s burlesque version of Herod. That said, the entire show was stolen by Ben Daniels, who was wonderfully conflicted as Pilate. I wasn’t as impressed by Sara Bareilles as Mary Magdalene, or I should say that I apparently wasn’t as impressed with her performance as everyone else on twitter. (To me, she seemed a bit too peppy, especially in the early numbers. I know I’m in the minority as far as that goes.) Finally, in the role of Jesus, John Legend grew on me. Of course, in the show, Jesus doesn’t really become an interesting character until he sings “Poor Jerusalem” and that was the moment that Legend himself seemed to truly feel comfortable with the role.
It’s probably pointless to compare the 1973 film to the 2018 version but still, I did find it interesting how the live version reimagined the relationship between Jesus and Judas. In the 1973 version, Jesus is largely aloof for almost the entire film. Judas seems to be frustrated because he can’t figure out what Jesus is planning to do and Jesus himself never seems to feel that he can allow himself to get truly close to anyone. In the film, Judas’s anger is the anger of someone who has spent the last few years of his life following a leader and who is now wondering if he’s been wasting his time. He’s like a Democrat who has just realized that his party is even less interested in reigning in Wall Street than the Republicans.
In the live version, the Jesus/Judas relationship came across as being a bromance gone wrong. In this version, Judas’s disatisfaction is less political and more jealousy over Jesus being closer to the Magdalene than to him. When Judas snaps at Jesus in the 2018 version, Jesus actually seems to get personally offended. The dynamic between Dixon and Legend is definitely different from the one between Ted Neeley and Carl Anderson in the original version. Of course, there’s nothing wrong with that. That’s one of the wonderful things about theater. When successfully done, each subsequent production brings something new to an old story.
Jesus Christ Superstar definitely worked. As far as the current wave of live television musicals is concerned, this was the best one yet.
The simple answer to that is that Barabbas was the prisoner who, according to the Gospels, Pontius Pilate released during Passover. As the story goes, Pilate gave the people the choice. He could either release Barabbas or Jesus. For what crime was Barabbas being held? The Gospel of Matthew merely says that Barabbas was a “notorious prisoner.” Mark and Luke both write that he was involved in a recent riot and that he was a murderer. The Gospel of John refers to him as being a bandit, which may have been another term for revolutionary. Regardless of what crime he had committed, the people overwhelmingly called for Barabbas to be released and for Jesus to be crucified. What happened to Barabbas after he was set free is not recorded but has been the subject of a good deal of speculation over the centuries.
(Of course, there are some scholars who believe that the Barabbas story was simply an invention of later writers, designed to shift the responsibility for the crucifixion away from the Romans. There’s also some who say that Jesus and Barabbas were actually the same person and that the inclusion of the Barabbas story was meant to indicate that Jesus was actually a revolutionary who was working to free Judea from Roman role. I imagine Dan Brown will eventually base a novel on this theory, so look forward to hearing your grandma debating the historicity of Barabbas at some point in the future.)
Back to the original question, who was Barabbas?
According to the 1961 film of the same name, Barabbas was Anthony Quinn.
Based on a novel by the Nobel Prize-winning Swedish author, Pär Lagerkvist, Barabbas opens with Pilate (Anthony Kennedy) making his infamous offer. Barabbas or Jesus? Perhaps the only person more shocked than Pilate by the people’s decision is Barabbas himself. A brutish and violent man, Barabbas is looking forward to returning to his old life but, as he leaves the prison, he finds himself fascinated by the sight of Jesus stoically carrying the cross, heading to the fate that Barabbas was spared. Later, Barabbas witnesses the Crucifixion and is shaken when, upon Jesus’s death, the sky turns black.
(Director Richard Fleischer shot the Crucifixion during an actual solar eclipse, so that the sky actually did turn black during filming. It’s a stunning scene.)
For the rest of his life, Barabbas is haunted by both his narrow escape from death and his subsequent notoriety. When Barabbas tries to reunite with his former lover, Rachel (Silvana Mangano), he discovers that not only does she now want nothing to do with him but that she has also become a follower of Jesus. (Later, in a surprisingly graphic scene, Rachel is stoned to death.) Barabbas becomes convinced that he cannot die and he becomes increasingly reckless in his behavior. Over the next few decades, he finds himself sold into slavery and forced to spend 20 years working in the harsh sulfur mines of Sicily. He befriends a Christian named Sahak (Vittorio Gassman) and, with him, is trained to be a gladiator by the sadistic Torvald (Jack Palance). Eventually, Barabbas finds himself rejected by both the Romans and the Christians while Rome burns all around him.
Barabbas is a film that really took me by surprise. I’ve seen a lot of Biblical and Roman films from the 50s and 60s and I was expecting that Barabbas would be another sumptuously produced but slow-paced epic, one that would inevitably feature stiff dialogue and overly reverential performances. I mean, don’t me wrong. I happen to love spectacle and therefore, I enjoy watching most of those old historical and religious epics. But still, for modern audiences, these films can often seem rather … well, hokey.
But Barabbas was totally different from what I was expecting. As wonderfully played by Anthony Quinn, Barabbas wanders through most of the film in a state of haunted confusion. Even at the end of the film, after he’s met St. Peter (Harry Andrews), Barabbas doesn’t seem to fully understand what he believes or how he’s become one of the most notorious men in Rome. Quinn plays Barabbas almost like a wild animal, one that has been cornered and trapped by his own infamy. The more Barabbas struggles against his fate, the more trapped he becomes. Barabbas may be a brute but, the film suggests, even a brute can find some sort of redemption. Quinn gets good support from the entire supporting cast. Jack Palance is perfectly evil as Torvald while Vittorio Gassman, Silvana Mangano, and Ernest Borgnine bring some needed nuance to characters who, in lesser hands, could have just been cardboard believers.
Barabbas is a surprisingly dark film. When Rachel is stoned, the camera doesn’t flinch from showing just how cruel an execution that was. Nor does the camera flinch from the violent brutality of the gladiatorial games. When Barabbas is sold into slavery, the sulfur mines of Sicily are depicted in Hellish detail and practically the only thing that saves Barabbas from spending the rest of his life being smothered under a cloud of sulfur is a giggly Roman woman who decides to buy Barabbas so that he can serve as a good luck charm. The scenes of Barabbas’s skill of a gladiator are contrasted with the bloodthirsty crowd demanding and cheering death. Even when Barabbas joins the Christians in the Roman catacombs, he discovers that they want nothing to do with him, suggesting that they believe in forgiveness for everyone but him. The spectacle of Rome is displayed but so is the terror of what lies underneath the city’s ornate surface. If Barabbas is occasionally a ruthless or unsentimental character, one need only look at the world he lives in to understand why.
With the exception of a few slow scenes at the start of the film, director Richard Fleischer does a good job of keeping the action moving. It’s a long film but it never becomes a boring one. In the end, thanks to Quinn’s performance and the film’s unflinching portrayal of life in ancient Rome, Barabbas is a biblical epic for people who usually don’t like biblical epics.
For today’s music video of the day, we have Swedish House Mafia’s Don’t You Worry Child. This was their 6th and, to date, final single.
(I say “to date” because some of us continue to hope that they’ll eventually get back together for more than just a one-night appearance at the Ultra Music Festival.)
This video was shot during the group’s final performance in the UK, at the National Bowl in Milton Keynes.
I have to say thank you to Evelyn Spurlock for recommending this video to me!
This song is performed by Etan Salomon, who is also the lead vocalist of Tetish.
The animation (and, I’m going to guess, the direction) is credited to Glendon and Isabella, who are credited with directing over 11 other music videos as well.
I don’t really have much to say about this video, other than it’s Swedish House Mafia so I love it. If it makes you want to dance, then it’s done its job.
The 1987 film Gor opens with a nerdy college professor (played by Urbano Barberini, of Demons and Opera fame) giving perhaps the worst lecture in the history of underwhelming lectures. The professor explains that there is a counter-earth, a place that he claims is known as Gor. Gor shares the same orbit as Earth but it’s linearly opposed to Earth, which apparently makes it impossible to see. However, the professor says that his father gave him a ring which can transport the user to Gor. The only problem is that the professor has not figured out how to use the ring.
The students all look incredibly bored with the lecture and I don’t blame them. Not only does the professor seem to be rambling but he doesn’t even offer up any visual aides. He could have at least utilized a powerpoint presentation or something. Instead, his only teaching aide is a whiteboard on which he’s written “counter-earth.” I have to wonder what their final exam is going to look like. “True or false. Your professor is a freaking loon.”
(I found myself wondering what university would possibly grant tenure to some guy who thinks he owns a magic ring but then I remembered Evergreen College.)
The professor’s name is Tarl Cabot and I think that’s a good deal of his problem right there. When you give a child a name like Tarl Cabot, you’re pretty much guaranteeing that he’s going to grow up believing that he has a magic ring that’ll transport him to another planet.
Of course, in Tarl’s case, it turns out that the ring does just that. After his teaching assistant dumps him so that she can go on a date with another professor, Tarl crashes his car and when he wakes up, he finds himself on Gor. Apparently, the ring only works if you crash your car or something.
As for Gor itself, it turns out to be kind of a dump. It’s a huge desert. Seriously, check out this counter-earth:
If Tarl wanted to see a desert, he could have just driven around Southern California and saved himself a lot of trouble.
Yes, there is trouble in Gor. No sooner has Tarl arrived then he’s being attacked by a bunch of barbarians on horseback. The barbarians are led by the evil Sarm (played by Oliver Reed). Much as with the case of Tarl Cabot, I think that once you name a child Sarm, you’ve pretty much guaranteed the way that his life is going to turn out. Anyway, Tarl somehow survives being attacked by the barbarians. He even manages to kill Sarm’s son, which leads to Sarm declaring that he wants Tarl dead.
Fortunately, Tarl is eventually rescued by another group of barbarians. This group is led by Talena (Rebecca Ferratti) and she wants Tarl to help her rescue her father from Sarm’s fortress. But how can Tarl help when he’s literally useless? Don’t worry! The good barbarians are willing to train Tarl. One montage later, Tarl is now a master swordsman. Now, all Tarl has to do is dress like a barbarian and then track down a little person who can serve as a guide to Sarm’s fortress!
And what a fortress it is! Sarm may be evil but he likes to make sure that both his guests and his slaves have a good time. Sarm welcomes Tarl to the fortress and even tries to recruit him over to his side. (So apparently, Sarm’s over that whole “you killed my son” thing.) Sarm understands that the best way to recruit Tarl is with a dance number! As Sarm laughs lustfully, the slaves put on a show. It’s somewhat out-of-place but at least it distracts from the rest of the film.
Anyway, there’s a lot of problems with Gor but the main one is that the place itself just doesn’t seem like it’s worth all the trouble. After spending years trying to figure out how to get to the planet, Tarl arrives and discovers that it’s basically the same desert that was used in almost every post-apocalyptic film made in the 80s and 90s. (In fact, judging from John Carter, it’s still being used today.) What I always wonder about this type of movie is 1) why is the other planet always full of humans who speak perfect English and 2) why do all of these planets feature a society that resembles that ancient Roman Empire? Apparently, swords and arrows are literally universal weapons because they’re used on every planet in the universe.
When I first saw that this film starred Urbano Barberini, I assumed that it was going to turn out to be an Italian production. (In the late 80s, there were several Italian films that featured barbarians fighting in post-apocalyptic landscapes.) However, it turns out that Gor was a South African production, co-produced by the legendary Harry Alan Towers and directed by an American named Firtz Kiersch. (Kiersch also directed the first film version of Children of the Corn.) That said, the film itself is so ineptly dubbed and the production values are so low-budget that it would still be easy to mistake Gor for a film directed by Bruno Mattei or Claudio Fragasso.
Because he’s so badly dubbed, it’s difficult to really judge Barberini’s performance as Tarl Cabot. At the very least, he looks good with a sword in his hand and he’s cute — if never quite believable — when he plays Tarl as a neurotic physicist. However, Barberini can’t really compete with Oliver Reed, who devours every inch of scenery that he can find. Reed bellows and laughs and appears to be drunk in almost every scene in which he appears but at least he seems to be having a good time. Reed is also required to wear a silly helmet in most of his scenes and I sincerely hope that he got to take it home with him.
Oliver Reed isn’t the only familiar face to pop up in Gor. There’s also Jack Palance. Palance only shows up for about two minutes and he looks rather confused as he discusses his plan to conquer the world. (Apparently, Palance returned in Gor‘s sequel.) For two minutes of screen time, Palance managed to score himself third billing in the opening credits of Gor, above even Oliver Reed! Way to go, Jack!
Anyway, Gor is a pretty stupid movie. I appreciated the random dance number but otherwise, it’s fairly dull and only occasionally enlivened by Oliver Reed’s refusal to go gently into that dark night. I’m going to guess that films like this were popular with filmgoers who saw themselves as real-life Tarl Cabots and who spent their spare time thinking, “Nobody will laugh at me once they see me with a sword!” I caught the film yesterday on Comet TV, which is quickly becoming one of my favorite channels for watching bad movies.
