Month: July 2020

One factor keeping Americans from grasping the magnitude of the COVID-19 pandemic is that outside the viral hot spots so few know anyone who has caught the disease or died from it. Here in this county of 260, 000, we knew three afflicted in March at a time there were only 40 cases on record. How is that possible? They were never tested despite the now-classic symptoms. Tests were being rationed and the one man and two women did not qualify.

They recovered at home in time. In New York City, many never lived to make it to the hospital. Many of them were never tested either.

As valiantly as local officials struggle to save lives, the nation’s non-response has been a national disgrace (Washington Post):

Six months after the coronavirus appeared in America, the nation has failed spectacularly to contain it. The country’s ineffective response has shocked observers around the planet.

Many countries have rigorously driven infection rates nearly to zero. In the United States, coronavirus transmission is out of control. The national response is fragmented, shot through with political rancor and culture-war divisiveness. Testing shortcomings that revealed themselves in March have become acute in July, with week-long waits for results leaving the country blind to real-time virus spread and rendering contact tracing nearly irrelevant.

“It’s deliberate”

Beth Cameron, once senior director for the National Security Council’s global health security and biodefense team the Trump administration disbanded, told the Post:

“I just never expected that we would have such a lack of federal leadership, and it’s been deliberate,” she said. “In a national emergency that is a pandemic, spreading between states, federal leadership is essential. And if there was any doubt about that, we ran that experiment from March and April until now. It failed. So we have to run a different experiment.”

The White House punted to the states. The acting president is trying to avoid responsibility for pandemic response failures while claiming credit for any successes.

Making matters worse, Donald Trump “is also trying to block billions of dollars that GOP senators want to allocate for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and billions more for the Pentagon and State Department to address the pandemic at home and abroad,” the Washington Post reported over the weekend.

Trump appears to believe the flood of new cases is because testing creates cases as if by cause and effect. Even as he brags the U.S. has “the best testing” and “the most testing,” he opposes it. More cases make him look bad. The CDC has made him look bad. Their funding has to go.

Sam Hammond of the right-leaning Niskanen Center told the Post, “Senate Republicans have asked for funding to help states purchase test kits in bulk. As it currently stands, the main bottleneck to a big ramp-up in testing is less technical than the White House’s own intransigence.”

David Carney, adviser to Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, tells the New York Times the president “got bored” with the pandemic.

Betrayed

The once can-do United States cannot. The U.S. is headed for another massive spike in sickness and death with no leadership at the top:

Kristin Urquiza, 39, said she tried warning her father, Mark — a lifelong Republican — against going out and risking infection. In their home state of Arizona, as leaders including Gov. Doug Ducey (R) sprinted to reopen in May and June, Urquiza could tell she was losing the argument.

“When the president, the governor and people on cable news are all saying one thing, how do you compete with that?” she said. “He would push back. ‘I hear what you’re saying, but why would the governor say it’s safe to go out if it’s not true?’ ”

Americans who start brawls other over toys and appliances at Black Friday sales took the reopenings to mean “All Clear.” It wasn’t. Urquiza’s father learned the hard way:

Her father died of the virus June 30. In the obituary she wrote, she lashed out at government leaders.

“He was a huge supporter of Trump and Arizona governor Ducey. He believed what they said. And they betrayed him,” she said in an interview.

Trump wants to get back to his adulation rallies. In an interview Sunday with Chris Wallace of Fox News Sunday, Trump doubled down on his prediction the virus will simply “disappear” someday. But before that happens, and likely before the November elections, many more of his supporters will know someone sickened or killed by COVID-19. He will not be able to rally away or frighten away their pain.

One 120-bed nursing home here had coronavirus infections among three-quarters of its residents. Thirty of those died. Fifty-two staff members were infected before the outbreak ended. That is what the acting president means by the virus disappearing someday.

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For The Win, 3rd Edition is ready for download. Request a copy of my free countywide GOTV mechanics guide at ForTheWin.us. This is what winning looks like.
Note: The pandemic will upend standard field tactics in 2020. If enough promising “improvisations” come my way, perhaps I can issue a COVID-19 supplement.

Almost exactly four years ago today:

In 1988 he thought the US had been “ripped off” by the rest of the world for 25 years. That means that in 2016, when he insisted that the rest of the world was laughing at us, he was saying that the US had been getting screwed by foreigners for 53 years. Nothing had changed in 28 years.

There are good reasons to be upset at America’s trade policy. Globalization has certainly had a negative affect on the American workforce. But Trump’s concern wasn’t about that. It was about being “laughed at” and “taken advantage of.” His understanding of trade is that we should be “making money” from tariffs on foreign goods and “winning” is having a trade surplus with the rest of the world. And he’s thought that since at least 1988 and no circumstances or changes in the way the world economy is organized has changed that.

Here’s the US Annualized GDP change from 1923 to 2009. Data are annual from 1923 to 1946 and quarterly from 1947 to the second quarter of 2009.

Note the period between 1963 to 1988 that Trump was whining about. The blues are expansions.

By the way in case anyone’s curious about Trump’s allegedly greatest economy in the world —

Historically the United States averaged a 3.21% growth rate from 1947 to 2019, according to Trading Economics. A poor first quarter growth rate generated legitimate fears of a recession, spurred on, no doubt, by trade wars, a government shutdown, and concerns about the yield curve. Growth rebounded in the second quarter (above 3%) but settled back down to 2% in the third and fourth quarters of 2019.

America is doing relatively well, keeping the top market spot currently ,and appears to be holding off China for the next several years. But the GDP per capita and growth rates for the United States could be better. More international political cooperation, as well as domestic political teamwork, could be the solution.

He just has to use every tool he has to punish the Deep State:

The Trump administration is canceling the Presidential Rank Awards, one of the nation’s highest annual honors for career civil servants that two years ago recognized a government official who later testified during President Donald Trump’s impeachment proceedings, Insider has learned…

The demise of the Presidential Rank Awards is “very disappointing” and a “missed opportunity” to honor the work of senior government executives tirelessly implementing COVID-19 programs alongside their other duties, said Jason Briefel, director of policy and outreach for the Senior Executives Association, a nonprofit organization that represents the interests of career federal executives.

Word of the awards’ cancellation surprised Briefel, who said he learned the news from an Insider reporter.

[…]

Nothing seemed awry with the Presidential Rank Awards in February, when then-OPM Director Dale Cabaniss officially called for nominations.

Nominees, she wrote, should be “extraordinary leaders who have made significant contributions in delivering mission critical solutions, providing excellent customer service and being good stewards of taxpayers’ dollars.”

The award nomination process proceeded as normal into March, according to an email exchange involving Boehm, Interior Department Inspector General Mark Lee Greenblatt, Federal Election Commission Inspector General Christopher Skinner and Corporation for Public Broadcasting Inspector General Kimberly Howell.

But OPM in late March suspended the award nomination process with an eye toward canceling the 2020 awards entirely, according to another email exchange among the inspectors general.

Cabaniss resigned in May, with Politico reporting at the time that she felt poorly treated by Trump loyalists.

[…]

In November, Trump recognized 146 Presidential Rank Awards winners for 2019. There are roughly 9,000 government employees eligible for the awards.

The year before, in 2018, Trump presented Office of Management and Budget official Mark Sandy with a Presidential Rank Award. Sandy made headlines in 2019 for testifying before US House impeachment investigators about military aid the Trump administration had for weeks withheld from Ukraine.

The election-year rejection of the civil service’s annual awards is the latest example of the Trump administration squeezing a federal bureaucracy that the president has deemed as bloated and disobedient.

Trump himself has suggested his own government even houses shadowy elements conspiring against his presidency.

“We are finally putting America first. Yet the ‘deep state’ and the failed ruling class are trying to resist any changes to their failed policies of the past,” Trump said during a November campaign rally in Lexington, Kentucky.

In March, the president referred to the State Department as the “Deep State Department” during a White House press conference and soon after began peddling an “Obamagate” conspiracy theory that holds Obama and his allies are attempting a “coup” against him.

Trump has also heartened adherents to the QAnon conspiracy theory, which the FBI named in a May 2019 intelligence document as a potential terrorism threat. Trump, for example, hosted a QAnon advocate in the Oval Office, and last year he invited to the White House conservative social media influencers who promote QAnon content.

The last three-plus years have also seen a dramatic remaking of the federal workforce under Trump.

In June, the president issued an executive order that directs OPM to “review and revise all job classification and qualification standards” for competitive civil service jobs. The order says “skills- and competency-based hiring” should be a high priority akin to a college degree.

Trump has fired or marginalized several prominent inspectors general, the independent, internal government watchdogs tasked with addressing waste, fraud, abuse and potential illegality within the executive branch.

Like Trump knows what “skills and competency based” anything is.

I’m sure they canceled this when they realized Trump had given the award to Mark Sandy. It’s just another punitive act of retribution for the impeachment.

I love this:

Here's the scoop on my time as an ice cream man. pic.twitter.com/UfHzljSo67

— Ed Markey (@EdMarkey) July 19, 2020

Markey is being challenged in a primary by Joe Kennedy — for no good reason that I can discern except the timetable for Kennedy’s political ambitions.

All’s fair in primary politics. But this isn’t about policy or philosophy. I’m sure Kennedy will be ok as a Senator. But Markey is a good progressive who should be able to continue to serve rather than be ousted by America’s ongoing fetishization with celebrity solely to advance Kennedy’s career. I hope the people of Massachusetts keep him.

Anyway, that ad is great.

Trump re-election was in trouble even before the pandemic hit. His presidency has been a dumpster fire from the beginning, even culminating in an impeachment that was only thwarted by blind partisanship on the part of the GOP. Nonetheless, Trump probably could have rallied enough of the American people to his side to win re-election if he’d been even slightly competent in handling this crisis. This is the sort of thing that makes or breaks a president.

It’s broken this one. He couldn’t possibly have done worse.

As reported Friday, approval of his handling of the pandemic has fallen from 51% in late March to 38% now, with disapproval up 15 points. He’s lost 7 points in approval of his handling of the economy, to 50%, with disapproval up 9.

Trump’s overall job approval rating is 39% in this poll, produced for ABC by Langer Research Associates – down 9 points in the course of the pandemic, with disapproval up 11. Trump remains the first president in modern polling never to achieve majority approval for his work in office, with the lowest career average on record.

Bottom line:

Judging by his performance today, I don’t think Trump is going to be able to turn this around. Instead of making a change in strategy he’s doing what he always does, doubling down. I don’t think it’s going to work for him.

Here’s an exchange on Fox News this morning about Joe Biden:

TRUMP:  Biden can’t put two sentences together. They wheel him out. He goes up — he repeats — they ask him questions. He reads a teleprompter and then he goes back into his basement. You tell me the American people want to have that in an age where we’re in trouble with other nations that are looking to do numbers on us.

WALLACE:  So let me ask you a direct question.

TRUMP:  No, no…

WALLACE:  No, I’m going to ask you a direct question about Joe Biden. Is Joe Biden senile?

TRUMP:  I don’t want to say that. I’d say he’s not competent to be president. To be president, you have to be sharp and tough and so many other things. He doesn’t even come out of his basement. They think, “Oh this is a great campaign.” So he goes in, I’ll then make a speech, it’ll be a great speech, and some young guy, starts writing, ‘Vice President Biden said this, this, this, this.’ He didn’t say it. Joe doesn’t know he’s alive, OK? He doesn’t know he’s alive.

Do the American people want that, number one. Number two, I built the greatest economy ever built anywhere in the world; not only of this country, anywhere in the world.  Until we got hit with the China virus. We got hit with the virus, shouldn’t have happened, and we had to close up, we saved millions of lives. Now we’ve opened it up, got to go back to school. We’re open. We’ve got to do things.

We had the best job numbers we’ve ever had last month. We should have good ones coming up in two weeks. Look, I built the greatest economy in history, I’m now doing it again. You see the numbers; the numbers are through the roof. The Democrats are purposely keeping their schools closed, keeping their states closed. I called Michigan, I want to have a big rally in Michigan. Do you know we’re not allowed to have a rally in Michigan? Do you know we’re not allowed to have a rally in Minnesota? Do you know we’re not allowed to have a rally in Nevada? We’re not allowed to have rallies.

I think even his most fervent cult members must have been taken aback by this interview this morning. He is rambling incoherently as he’s claiming that Joe Biden is so old and addled that he doesn’t know he’s alive. I suspect some of his senior followers might just be a little bit disturbed by that. Then he bizarrely claims the economic numbers are great (they are anything but) and whines about not being allowed to hold rallies in the middle of the pandemic which he has made much worse than it needed to be.

He’s losing Republicans now:

Rising disapproval of Trump’s job performance is broadly based. It’s up 22 points since March among those very worried about catching the coronavirus, to 82%. It’s also up in two of his key support groups, +20 points among rural Americans and +12 points among evangelical white Protestants, to 45 and 30%, respectively. Disapproval also is up especially among Southerners (+18 points); and Blacks, women, moderates and suburbanites, all up 15 to 16.

By partisanship, Democrats now disapprove nearly unanimously of Trump’s work in office, up 17 points in three and a half months to 95%; 56% of independents also disapprove, up 11. Among Republicans, 16% disapprove, up 10 points from late May.

Apparently he believes it’s because he hasn’t lied, bragged and whined enough lately so he’s decided to do more of it.

Update —

The last few paragraphs of Mary Trump’s book:

Even the stupidest people tend to be more logical than that.

oh… https://t.co/vt4kI14Buv

— digby (@digby56) July 19, 2020

The “harder question” at the end is to recall five words you memorized at the beginning of the test.

In Trump’s defense, the former White House physician Dr. Ronny Jackson gave him the test and is such a boot-licking sycophant that he probably did tell him that hardly anyone can pass this very difficult test. (Trump had to pay someone to take his SAT so he hasn’t taken a test for at least 60 years. He may actually think that test is hard.)

His intellectual limitations are really to show in new ways. He’s always been dumb but now he can’t control the conversation or blame his predecessors and he’s flailing more than ever.

“We won two world wars. Beautiful world wars. That were vicious and horrible. And we won them out of Fort Bragg, we won them out of all of these forts, and now they want to throw those names away.” — Trump, from a Fox interview with Chris Wallace this morning.

“What are we made of? Our fathers came across the prairies, fought Indians, fought drought, fought locusts, fought Dix… remember when Richard Dix came in here and tried to take over this town? Well, we didn’t give up then, and by gum, we’re not going to give up now!” — ‘Olson Johnson’ (as played by David Huddleston) from “Blazing Saddles”, interpreting Gabby Johnson’s “authentic frontier gibberish”.

Now who can argue with that?

He’s doing it:

The Trump administration is trying to block billions of dollars for states to conduct testing and contact tracing in the upcoming coronavirus relief bill, people involved in the talks said Saturday.

The administration is also trying to block billions of dollars that GOP senators want to allocate for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and billions more for the Pentagon and State Department to address the pandemic at home and abroad, the people said.

The administration’s posture has angered some GOP senators, the officials said, and some lawmakers are trying to push back and ensure that the money stays in the bill. The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to reveal confidential deliberations, cautioned that the talks were fluid and the numbers were in flux.

The negotiations center around a bill Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) is preparing to unveil this coming week as part of negotiations with Democrats on what will likely be the last major coronavirus relief bill before the November election.

Negotiations are expected to kick off with increased urgency because of the rapid growth of cases — and steady uptick in deaths — in the United States. The number of cases began falling in April but accelerated sharply after Memorial Day, shattering records in the past two weeks.

As far as I can tell, they’re giving no official reason for doing this. But they don’t need to, do they? But we all know why.

The White House insists schools must reopen this fall. Even as coronavirus cases spike across the country. Even as evidence appears that any immunity one gains from having survived the virus once is fleeting.

A retired COVID-19 military writes at Daily Beast that with hurricane season upon us, Texas could be in deep trouble. A COVICANE, a hurricane in the middle of a coronavirus pandemic, could stretch first-responders and National Guard “to the breaking point,” requiring active duty forces to pitch in. “The Army only keeps a few active units on standby for what is known as the Defense Support to Civil Authorities mission,” Kris Alexander writes. “In a pinch, untrained active-duty forces could fill the gap and do their best. But the real problems would come after their exposure to the virus in the disaster zone.”

Denial of the precariousness of the moment combined with the cultish fealty commanded by the acting president could make a perfect storm of the next hurricane to make landfall.

Serb nationalists already deny that mass killings of Muslims occurred in Srebrenica during the Bosnian war of the mid-1990s, writes David Rohde at The New Yorker. Even after a U.N. war-crimes tribunal “exhaustively documented the killings, exhuming mass graves, establishing the Bosnian Serb military chain of command during the executions, and ruling, in 2004, that they constitute genocide.”

Conspiracy theories have grown to explain away and deny the atrocities. The dead are really alive and living in Germany. Reports of eight thousand dead is a “farce,” a “circus,” and “make believe.” With so many Americans dead from the coronavirus and wearing masks to stem the spread a national “controversy,” Rohde wonders if denialism is in our future:

Like most Americans, I had hoped that, at this point in our history, the successful use of disinformation, conspiracy theories, and denialism for significant political gain was no longer viable. I assumed, arrogantly, that our nation’s democratic institutions, as well as its free press, would reject, expose, and discredit false claims. Instead, in recent years, a willingness to distort basic facts, the rise of partisan media outlets, and the explosion of false information online has made denialism politically profitable in the U.S. As a pandemic, protests for racial justice, and a Presidential race unfold across the country, an extraordinary level of confusion and division has beset the country. Basic tenets of American governance, from trusting nonpartisan experts to election results, are under assault. Part of the problem is President Trump’s embrace of such tactics, but it is foolish to ignore the distrust, institutional decay, and alienation that contribute to his appeal.

If such a calamity as Bosnia’s befell the United States, Rohde thought, surely its leaders and institutions would meet the challenge. They have not.

It is the United States where the virus is spreading unchecked, owing, in part, to the nation’s lack of leadership and consensus. It is this country that is experiencing calamity. The diplomat I spoke to, who is from a Western country, said that the same sentiment had occurred to him, as he watched the pandemic and the debate over face masks divide the U.S. “I very much agree,” he said. “I’ve been thinking the exact same thing.” Fear can still be used in any nation for political gain. Denialism is a universal comfort—and a threat—to us all.

Jade helm—Indeed. https://t.co/YWK4eM41OH

— Gen Michael Hayden (@GenMhayden) July 17, 2020

At Daily Kos, Walter Einenkel reminds readers how in 2015, right-wing conspiracists spread rumors that Jade Helm, an annual military exercise held in Texas, was cover for Barack Obama bringing martial law to the Lone Star State as prelude to him remaining in office beyond eight years:

The Jade Helm 15 training exercise came and went with not a single example of federal military overreach into poor old Texas. The Republican governor of the state “ordered members of the Texas Military to monitor federal troops in an upcoming two-month training exercise planned for the Lone Star State.” The conspiracy theorists and elected officials who promoted the true paranoia just moved on to the next bogus conspiracy involving the country’s first Black president. And now, in Portland, Oregon USA, the federal government—despite the increasingly alarmed demands from state officials to stand down—under orders from Trump and Barr “people in camouflage were driving around the area in unmarked minivans grabbing people off the street.”

These and other actions by the Trump administration will require a full airing, if not prosecution. Writing for The Independent, Andrew Feinberg queried the Joe Biden campaign about sanctioning a “Trump Crimes Commission” to investigate misuse of government resources for personal gain, “the abuse and mistreatment of persons — including minors — in immigration detention [and] obstruction of justice and making false statements to Congress”:

Remarkably, not a single Biden campaign official or adviser contacted by your intrepid correspondent would respond to questions about whether a Biden administration would undertake any effort to look back at the Trump years — either to merely document for posterity any violations of law, or to identify and prosecute administration officials and other government employees who committed illegal acts.

And while Biden’s forward-looking agenda of reforms has generally been well-received in Democratic circles, the lack of a similar plan to look back on the previous four years has set off alarm bells among those some Biden backers who are still smarting over Obama’s “let bygones be bygones” approach to Bush-era abuses.

Such a commission, former federal prosecutor Glenn Kirschner believes, “would be a mashup of sorts which combines aspects of the de-Nazification process, and of South Africa’s post-apartheid Truth and Reconciliation Commission.” Waving away criminality again will be an error more profound for having lived through the Trumpish result of waving it away the first time. Fool me once, etc.

In this post-truth world, however, even comprehensive documentation — incoming Democrats must guard against wholesale destruction of Trump documents — will not stem the growth of Bosnian-like denial among a population ingesting conspiracy theories as part of its daily news diet. The body counts, the refrigerated trailer-morgues, etc. likely will be waved away by supposed “temperamentally conservative and fundamentally decent” Americans who denied the evidence of their own eyes, ears, noses, and throats in supporting failed leaders who promised greatness while delivering death and dishonor.

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For The Win, 3rd Edition is ready for download. Request a copy of my free countywide GOTV mechanics guide at ForTheWin.us. This is what winning looks like.
Note: The pandemic will upend standard field tactics in 2020. If enough promising “improvisations” come my way, perhaps I can issue a COVID-19 supplement.

Last week, I apprised you of some noteworthy Blu-ray reissues of 2020 (so far). As more studios have come to realize that there is a market of film buffs out there, in the dark hungering for spiffed-up releases of classics (I know…“OK, Boomer”)  they are digging deeper into the vaults (as am I, into my wallet). So here are a few more worth a look!

Atlantic City (Paramount) – Burt Lancaster and Susan Sarandon deliver outstanding lead performances in this 1980 neo-noir/character study from Louis Malle. Lancaster plays a fading, low-level gangster eking out a living as a bookie. He is also the weary caretaker (and occasional lover) of his former boss’s ailing widow (Kate Reid), who lives in the apartment directly below (whenever she needs him, she comically yanks on an old-fashioned room-to-room bell…making him appear more like an indentured servant).

The biggest thrill in the aging hood’s life derives from an occasional peep at his sexy neighbor (Susan Sarandon), whose kitchen window directly faces his across the courtyard of their apartment building. She conducts a nightly cleaning ritual involving fresh lemons over her kitchen sink-topless (I love the soliloquy Lancaster delivers about “the lemons” after she asks him what he does when he watches her…it is a scene that in the hands of two lesser actors would play more lasciviously than so sweetly). Fate and circumstance tosses them together and puts them on the run from murderous gangsters looking to recover some stolen drugs.

John Guare’s screenplay is rich in characterization, bolstered by a marvelous cast (right down to the bit parts). Atlantic City itself becomes a key character, thanks to Richard Ciupka’s cinematography and Malle’s skillful direction. Malle chose an interesting time to film there; many old hotels and casinos were in the process of being demolished in order to make way for new construction, which adds to the overall elegiac tone.

Paramount’s Blu-ray does show a fair amount of grain and is obviously “not restored” (to which some visible debris and scratches attest), but the picture is still a vast improvement over the DVD. No extras, but I am happy to see this gem finally get a decent hi-def release (a previous Blu-ray by Gaumont, which I have not viewed, was reportedly less-than-stellar).

The Last Valley (Kino-Lorber) – Films set in Germany during The Thirty Years War are a niche genre…but as far as films set in Germany during the Thirty Years War go, one could do worse than this nearly forgotten but worthwhile drama from writer-director James Clavell.

The “outsider” is a recurring theme in Clavell’s work; and this tale is no exception. In this case the “outsider” is a two-headed beast in the form of an apolitical war refugee (Omar Sharif) and the ruthless Captain (Michael Caine) of a small contingent of mercenaries who both stumble upon a “hidden” valley whose residents have somehow managed to remain unscathed by the ravages of war and the Plague.

The Captain is ruthless (he would just as soon slit your throat as look at you) but also pragmatic; he decides against his initial impulse to kill Sharif, pillage the sleepy hamlet and move on after the quick thinking and silver-tongued Sharif convinces him it would be better all-around to spare the residents in exchange for putting his battle-weary soldiers up for the winter. The villagers, who seem malleable and complacent at first, come to reveal their own brand of pragmatism. A well-mounted period piece that also works as a timeless observation of human behavior in survival situations.

Kino-Lorber’s transfer of this 1971 film is excellent (although it does not look restored) and the audio quality is decent, which serves John Barry’s rousing score quite well. The only extra is a new commentary track, by a trio of film historians. It gets overly chatty at times with three people, but for the most part the observations are enlightening.

A Little Romance (Warner Archives) – This 1979 comedy-drama from George Roy Hill (with a screenplay adapted from a Patrick Cauvin novel by Allan Burns) is best described as a puppy-love Before Sunset. A 13-year-old movie-obsessed French boy with an above-average IQ (Thelonious Bernard) Meets Cute with a 13-year-old American girl with an above-average IQ (Diane Lane) on a movie set in Paris. They encounter a grandfatherly rapscallion (a hammy Laurence Olivier) who convinces them that the only way to affirm their budding love is to kiss under the Bridge of Sighs at sunset. The trio hit the road to Venice-with authorities in pursuit (alerted by the kids’ concerned parents).

This is a wonderful film; warm, funny, and endearing. Full of great little touches, like in the opening scene where Bernard is watching an American western dubbed in French. The film is Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. In a later scene, he and Lane happen into a theater showing The Sting (obvious in-jokes for movie buffs, as both of those films were directed by Hill!). Also, in the opening scene Bernard snatches the poster for Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid on his way out and gets chased down the street by the theater manager…an homage to the opening scene in Francois Truffaut’s The 400 Blows.

Warner Archives’ Blu-ray is bare bones (only one extra feature, “Remembering Romance with Diane Lane” which I have not got around to watching yet) but the transfer looks to have been taken from the best elements available (if not  actually “restored”). The audio is presented in the original 2.0 mono, but with DTS-DH Master Audio enhancement.

More reviews at Den of Cinema

— Dennis Hartley