I like Lost Highway too. It's actually a highway very much found, since it was Lynch returning to form. In fact, this film is useful to show to students who doubt that symbolism in films is intentional. They get really frustrated when I refuse to explain, 'but it has to have meaning!' they implore. I think Lynch can be very good at playing with semantics; playing in all senses: working through, toying, touching upon, impersonating, taking part in. It's difficult to tell which at any given time. Still, his principal influences are Surrealism and German Expressionism...

But tell me Ruby2, did you see his last film Inland Empire?

Hi Ahh,

Yes I did watch that, I was a bit disappointed actually.  I loved the title and I had high hopes for it, but I remember that as it finished we both just went "Oh."  I think we'd spend most of the film going "eh?", then "ah!" then "eh?" again.

I did like bits of it though. Like the random rabbit "sitcom" that popped up from time to time, with the very serious dialogue accompanied by canned laughter.

I seem to remember it ending oddly and leaving me dissatisfied.  I felt like I was sometimes grasping at parallels that were taking me towards getting what it was about, then it would take another twist and I was lost again.  I can't remember enough about it to comment in any meaningful way though!

So what did you think of it?

I'd actually forgotten about any Polish connection at all. Mind you, it wasn't nearly as Polish as the bit of Lincoln I live in.     And my memory is so bad about films that I quite often suggest we watch something that we've already apparently seen..

"How about this one?"
"You've seen that one honey"
"Have I?"
"Yes."
"Did I like it?"
"Yes."
"Oh good."

Excuse me for coming in here unasked.  Apparantly one was relatively safe as a Jew in Belgium under Nazi occupation.  Belgium was exclusively ruled by German military authorities.  Collaboration was only strong in Flanders.  Police and railmen did not co-operate systematically with the nazi-forces.  Jews also weren't unified under an influential Jewish counsel, complicating the task of rallying them. 

My source for this is Hannah Arendt's 'Eichmann in Jerusalem', maybe not the most reliable historical source.  I'm really not well informed either.  She speaks of a total of 25000 Belgian-Jewish victims.

If you are searching for a book on how the German occupation affected daily life, I'd recommend the memoirs of Simone de Beauvoir, La force de l'âge, translated as The Prime of Life (Part II, I think), in which she gives a detailed description of her life and the life of the Parisians under the occupation - these include some lenghty fragments of the diaries she wrote at the time.

There's a great little book by the Flemish author Louis Paul Boon detailing the daily life under German occupation in a provincial town in Flanders, called Mijn kleine oorlog, 'My little war' - sadly, there's no English translation.

And then there's the 'great Belgian novel', Het verdriet van België or 'The sorrow of Belgium' by the recently deceased Hugo Claus, which describes the war and the occupation from the viewpoint of a young boy in a collaborating Flemish-nationalist family. (English translation available!)

Which suggests to me that those Stalinists were no better than the people they were opposing. But no, bearing in mind that Kennedy Martin was born in 1932, I think it's more likely that it was a topical reference (this phrase comes up again and again in hostile exchanges between Israelis and their Palestinian/Arab adversaries, but it was especially potent back then). It would, I think, be like using the phrase 'you're with us or you're with the terrorists' nowadays.

The most charitable interpretation of the film is of a bunch of plucky lads from Blighty showing Johnny Foreigner a thing or two, but I think it's much more sinister than that.

A pogrom is a pogrom, and that's what Michael Caine (and by implication, Noel Coward) are advocating.

(I'm not talking about the remake, by the way, and would rather this be kept in the main thread, for all that the remake is craply directed, scripted and acted, the comments about Ukranians are somehow less potent than those about Italians in the original)

Sure - I wasn't suggesting that it was a coded reference to Israelis, just about the fact that the phrase was known then. Much though many gangsters are extremely nasty people, on the whole I don't find them making threats against whole people's just because of their ethnic origin (Mr Bridger, with his form of patriotism, is that worst British thing, a mixture of disarming charm with utter lack of contempt for anything/anyone other than his own interests). The Italian characters are all stereotypes, as indeed are everyone except for the cheery Cockneys (and even they are, rather). Certainly it's the ultimate Eurosceptic film (Euroscepticism is just a nice word for xenophobia, though, on the whole).

When it's one lot of gangsters threatening another lot of gangsters, it's one thing. Mafia against British cockney mobs - OK, nothing odd about that. But this goes a stage much further. And I do think the Kristallnacht comparison is appropriate - primarily because it's to be 'every' single Italian-related property in the country. This would not be some spontaneous violence, but an organised event - a pogrom, as I say, just organised by gangsters rather than a government.

Try changing the word 'Italian' to 'Jew' or 'black' to see why I find this quite horrifying.

EDIT: As the original post has been moved to another thread, I'll copy it in again here to avoid confusion:

The Italian Job (the original version) is one of the most aggressively xenophobic films ever made. Do you remember when Michael Caine speaks these lines, after the mafia are threatening to kill him and his gang?

Hey!

You'll be making a grave error if you kill us. There are a quarter of a million Italians in Britain. And they'll be made to suffer. Every restaurant, café, ice-cream parlour, gambling den and nightclub in London, Liverpool and Glasgow, will be smashed. Mr Bridger will drive them into the sea.

At the time this bit of dialogue would probably have been written, these words would have had a particular resonance. On June 19, 1967, then Israeli Foreign Minister Abba Eban made a speech to the United Nations, in which he claimed the following:

The Syrian Defense Minister, Hafiz Asad, said two days later:

"We shall never call for, nor accept peace, We shall only accept war ... We have resolved to drench this land with our blood, to oust you, aggres­sors, and throw you into the sea for good."

(see here for the full speech)

Now there are varying opinions as to what exactly Asad said - and the phrase of 'throwing into the sea' has been variously attributed to some Palestinian leaders as well; I'm not really in a position to judge it. But I believe this speech was widely reported at the time, and it's likely that Troy Kennedy Martin, the screenwriter, certainly a man with his eye on the news, would have known it. And it sounds extremely sinister; it makes no difference whether referring to Jewish people or Italians.

The spectre that Caine conjures up is horribly close to Kristallnacht (which was also organized in response to a shooting).

If I may post in a slightly lighter vein (without dismissing what has been posted above). La Belle et La Bete - Cocteau (1946). I say 'lighter' vein, although there is much darkness in the film. A dream-like, visual gem, but not a tale for children (although I was child when I first saw it and was fascinated by the images). The Beast's castle is a strange and otherwordly place of shadows, menace and mental suffering. Wonderful.

Mr Google wouldn't let me have the image that I wanted, so this will have to do.
I wanted the disembodied arms with candelabra