Category Archives: film reviews

Honor.

May 30, 2016civic commentary, drama, family history, film reviews, gratitude, health and wellness, memorials, personal testimony, political commentary, social commentary, the power grid, tributes, WWIICorporals in the US Army, D-Day, Game of Thrones, General George S. Patton, James Bobick, Jerry Maren, Ken Burns documentaries, PBS war documentaries, Peter Dincklage, Peter Dinklage, PTSD, shell shocked, THE HUFFINGTON POST, The Munchkins, therapy for Veterans, Veterans of foreign wars, Walter E. Fernald School for the Feebleminded, Waverly Mass, World War II Memorials, WW II Bronze Star recipientsruth ann scanzillo

[ formerly titled “Objection.”]

Dad never knew his parents. He heard about them both, from his Uncle Gabriel and Aunt Marietta in Springfield, Mass on the rare respite they’d give him from the foster home or the Walter E. Fernald School in Waverly. They’d tell him things – how his brute of a father sang opera that you could hear down the block, in between the storied rumors of his philandering….about his mother, being committed, speaking only Italian, with no defense….and, about his cousin, Jerry Marengi, who would go on to become a world famous Munchkin. These things we all, as his family, would carry forward in the form of his legend.

So, when Dad escaped the confines of his anonymity, via the freight cars that carried him all the way to California from Boston, joining the US Army seemed almost logical. Free room and board, a hot meal (for which he’d panhandled so artfully as a self taught harmonica and bones man), a little physical agility, and he was in. In, to await deployment by the powers in place to submit him. No ties, no accountability; he was their easiest prey.

Fort Riley, Kansas was the first destination. Having had a few trumpet lessons in the Fernald school, he was ripe for lead bugle; each dawn and dusk, Private Anthony Scanzillo dutifully played Taps and Reveille on the horns the army gave him. Organizing, and then leading, a parade for the dignitaries on base earned him the rank of Corporal, which he held proudly until his death.

Dad, however, didn’t die in battle. Oh, no. He was one of the survivors.

In fact, when the war commenced, he being third fastest runner in his outfit they’d shipped him to Germany right off.

But, from that point, his always colorful stories were few; Dad would only speak in detail of the day he, as a member of the forward observing team of the 3rd armored, had to “infiltrate the enemy” at the Bulge. It was snowing, and he had a cough, and they had to shoot all the German prisoners on orders. But, they all lived through that hell and, in exchange for it, every infantryman received the Bronze Star.

Somewhere between enlisting and coming home the victor, there were less celebratory if more defining moments. There were the AWOLs. There was the all night guard duty. And, there was the guard house – where he’d frequently qualify, to all who would listen, his presence on Pearl Harbor Day, which was also his birthday. Dad’s role in all this emerged as a stand alone story; he wasn’t there for the medals.

I can’t remember what year it was. PBS was airing several mini-series, most of them documentaries, and the historian who stood out above the rest was Ken Burns. Ken Burns made his life work the chronicle of America, and he did it well. Never before seen footage, all the real thing, of everything from the jazz greats to, yes, American soldiers, in action.

Naturally, in the course of the Burns chronology of World War II, America’s most outstanding general received his own, multiple chapters. George S. Patton, the formidable, would be displayed in all his imposing force, with selected film clips in abundance.

One of these stopped me in my tracks.

I’ll never forget the evening. Probably dull of wit from a snacking binge, I had to be jolted awake by the scene. But, the image. The image was unmistakable.

Patton, Burns narrated, was always hard on his men. He never entertained the faint of heart, for any reason, chasing them down whenever he could. On one particular day, seems he’d found one: there, before our eyes, underscored by the unwitting Burns, was an army hospital, and one, lean, lone, raven haired soldier on a cot by the wall. The General loomed, raising his hand over this cowering young man, even in silent film barking forcefully at him to get up. The cameraman did not include the strike, but rumors were well circulated that this was part of the Patton package.

I recognized my father instantly.

No one knows when this happened. All anybody knew was Dad left the war a decorated forward observer, shell shocked, a victim of PTSD for the rest of his life. He could never tolerate fireworks (“screeming Meemies”) or sudden explosions of any kind, and would warn us repeatedly until his final years never, ever to come up behind him in the dark.

I wrote directly to Ken Burns, asking him to edit that segment from his series. The next time it aired, as God is my witness, actors portrayed that scene.

But, no actor could characterize my father as he was. Dad was a transparent innocent. He had none of the conventional role models, not a one. He was blessed with many gifts, one of them being the honest candor for which he was beloved by all. Dad was nobody’s victim.

God, in the wisdom mankind will never understand, spared Dad’s life – his, along with so many others, a fact for which the man himself always gave his Creator the glory. I like to think that Dad was protected because of his honesty. There is a fearlessness in such truth.

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Birthed.

April 15, 2016arts education, classical music, classical musicians, creative writing, drama, film reviews, musicians, performance, scenes, social commentary, sociology20th century musical theater, embittered mothers, mothers raising sons, musical theater, psychotherapy, reviews of musicals, Sondheim on Sondheim, Stephen Sondheim, theaterruth ann scanzillo

The American musical is ubiquitous. Sooner or later, all that is popular finds its way into the genre that delivers singing, dancing, singular sensation. Ever since opera buffa drew the local crowds to the town square, promising momentary diversion from war, pestilence, plague, and stench, humans have craved the escape of pure entertainment.

Enter Steven Sondheim.

A boy, born to a woman who loved a man who left her for another. Said child to learn at the feet of the greats – Oscar Hammerstein, Jimmy Hammerstein (Jimmy Hammerstein). Leonard Bernstein.

One would have thought that, bathed in such saturating influence, the young composer would have churned out second rate imitations of the icons who surrounded him. But, there was another factor at play, one that would be profoundly key to what would ultimately distinguish him as the social commentator of the age.

But, to reveal it would give away the heart of the story.

Steven Sondheim, for any musician from any genre, for any poet, for anyone who loves or has loved, for any student of the human condition…….people, you know when you come home from a session with your therapist, and all you can think about is how much money these people make for telling you to breathe deeply when you’re angry? Last weekend, I saw this man’s definitive autobiography, “Sondheim on Sondheim” at the Erie Playhouse. If you are privileged to see any production of this blended retrospective of his work, two full acts which he narrates on accompanying video, be sure to stay until the end. If you do, you will see into a mirror that will show you what you never before realized, feel things that you didn’t even know you needed to or could, and be floored by what is revealed.

As in his very life, the experience will tear you up and put you back together, like nothing else. It’ll be all the therapy you’ll ever need.

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“Once Upon A Time in America” – a Review.

January 27, 2015film reviewsAmerican film, film reviews, gender roles in early Italian America, Italian Americaruth ann scanzillo

Originally written circa 1989

“Once Upon A Time in America”…….Who would we have become were we the characters in this story?

It seemed in that era of survival of the fittest, and of subsequent male domination, women and men were so taken with the need to stay alive that their individual emotional needs were never either addressed or fulfilled. Their roles were both sexually defined and, at the same time, sexually insignificant. In paradox, this was an inherent problem not easily solved and, in the end, became one of the casualties of the era.

In the society of that age, women and men rarely did anything which engendered mutual respect. Men had an unspoken honor for one another but, in the eyes of men, women never achieved that level of regard. In “Once Upon A Time”, there were no women whose choices or character were painted as worthy. The closest thing to an act of love from a woman was the blond’s request that Noodles blow the whistle on his buddy to save his life. But, one wonders if, like the Moon Queen in Munchausen, her desires were suspect. (“Baron! Don’t LEAVE me!”) Even the dancer was characterized as a condescending bitch as she read to him from Song of Solomon. It was clear that, though she felt something, she found him unacceptable — soiled, beneath her. All other female characters were either dogs or whores. They were all ultimately both alienating and dispensable, because their motives were perceived as self-serving.

The male characters might have been arrogantly so, but seemed to get away with it to a point. Noodles appeared to be the only character with genuine humility. All the male characters had violently destructive profiles, but Noodles alone was able to express his in defense of the innocent.

Fascinating that none of the boys in the gang were characterized as members of real families. We never saw Noodles’ father or mother. We never saw any models of men or women in their lives beyond the older gangland members. We never saw how Noodles or any of the boys could ever come to view women as anything beyond expendable objects. The boys were always isolated, existing side by side, always alone together.

Perhaps the girls were, as well. The film does not set up their lives as bonded in any way. They seemed significant only as tangent to the lives of the boys, appearing singly, never even in pairs. Not surprising, then, that the first encounter between Noodles and a girl took place in the bathroom — a base, animalistic scenario at best. At worst, it was their only perceivable common ground. None other had ever been established, and their ascent barely edged them beyond it in the course of a lifetime.

But, Noodles idealized the dancer from the first moment. He watched her from his post in the john, his only known vantage point. Much as we all instinctively keep our distance from the object of our ideal (when eyes meet across a room) or from something which we perceive as unattainable, Noodles never left the bathroom.

Sadly, the dancer was not worthy of his idealism. She, too, embodied the essence of her environment’s demands. Aware of his voyeurism, she tantalized him purposefully. Yet, her restraint, her withholding from him, was born less of self respect than of self preservation and, ultimately, self importance. His first attempt at interaction with his ideal was gruff, familiar, in the manner to which he was accustomed, and ineffectual. She truly condescended to him from the beginning, and he adored her. He adored her art, and believed that she embodied his idealism.

His devotion to her, however, she cast aside – seeking the only open door to the survival of her identity: a career in dance. Her self love was the most poignant by-product of the unfulfilled needs of the era; she sacrificed the deepest, most potentially abiding love – Noodles’ – for the sake of her only perceived path to survival. So close, yet so far; in the end, she survived – only to succumb to the disease of emotional loss.

Noodles, capable of the purest love, was also a victim. There were no ideals produced beyond those he wanted to see in this woman by any redeemable source other than those he could contrive for her to possess. Only in this way could he possibly tell her that the choice she had made was a good one. He looked beyond her mask, the face that froze in time, to what he had hoped to believe in from the beginning. He continued to see in her until the facts convinced him otherwise that she was a deserving, noble creature. He saw the value of her personhood, the reality of her identity, and was powerless to legitimize her. Time had swept them both beyond, toward tragic heroism. They sacrificed the truest personal reward for the sake of the mission imposed upon them from birth.

circa 1989

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