I never saw any of Glenda Jackson‘s landmark performances on the Broadway stage — not her Nina Leeds in Eugene O’Neill’s Strange Interlude (’85) nor her commanding titular turn in King Lear (’19) nor her Tony Award-winning perf in Three Tall Women (’18). And I never saw her perform anything in her 20s, and before this morning I’d never even noticed her bit as a partygoer in Lindsay Anderson‘s This Sporting Life (’63) when she was 26 or thereabouts.

It probably goes without saying that I paid very little attention to her political career, which lasted from ’92 to ’15.

All I ever knew and loved about Jackson came from her sweet-spot period, which primarily occured in the ’70s and lasted roughly a decade (’69 to ’80). It happened between her Oscar-winning performance as the eccentric and perversely feminist Gudrun in Ken Russell‘s Women in Love (’69), which was made when she was 32 or 33, and her second and final escapist comedy with Walter Matthau, Hopscotch (’80), when she was 43 or 44.

Jackson’s most emotionally relatable ’70s performance, hands down and no debating, was Alex Greville in John Schlesinger‘s Sunday Bloody Sunday (’71), a melancholy romantic triangle film that happens to be one of my all-time favorites.

Other performing highlight films from this period included The Music Lovers (as Peter Tchaikovsky’s doomed wife, Nina), Mary, Queen of Scots (as Queen Elizabeth), Bequest to the Nation, the sophisticated romcom A Touch of Class (which resulted in her second Best Actress Oscar), The Romantic Englishwoman (’75), Hedda, House Calls (her first comedy with Walter Matthau), Lost and Found (her second outing with George Segal, released in ’79), and the title role in Robert Enders‘ Stevie (’78), about the British poet Stevie Smith.

Jackson passed today (Thursday, 6.15) at her London home. She was 87.

Four days ago (on Saturday, 6.10) I tapped out my latest riff about the bizarre deletion of a brief scene in William Friedkin‘s The French Connection (’71), which was apparently done (it physically pains me to type these words) with Friedkin’s approval or at his behest.

The day before (Friday, 6.9) HE commenter “The Multiplex” had reported that “in Disney’s DCP asset list the currently-streaming version of The French Connection is listed as ‘2021 William Friedkin v2.'”

This info, I noted, “is seemingly fortified by a statement from The Criterion Channel, passed along by “The Connection” in another 6.9.23 HE story titled “HE to Friedkin re Censorship Fracas.” CC’s statement said that “according to our licensor [Disney], this is a ‘Director’s Edit‘ of the film.”

I spoke yesterday to a Hollywood veteran, and one of the things I asked him was “why the hell would Friedkin betray the original artistic intent of his own Oscar-winning film by approving the deletion of a nine-second scene that uses the N-word?”

His reply: “Well, he’s entitled to do this, and the original film hasn’t disappeared — it’s available on physical media even if the streaming version is missing the censored footage.”

And then he said something interesting: “I don’t think Friedkin is playing the same close attention to this matter that you are.” I took that to mean that Friedkin may not be paying super-close attention in general.

The industry veteran then suggested that I drop the matter. “But it sets one hell of a precedent,” I replied. “What if it happens again with another important film…another woke censoring issue of some kind? I should drop that also?”

And yet I haven’t heard zip from Friedkin (I wrote him about this a while back) so in classic journalism terms the story has stalled.

I had presumed that Glenn Kenny‘s article on the matter would appear in the N.Y. Times, but my presumption, I gather, is erroneous. Some other outlet will run it this week.

This sparked a thought in my head, however, which was “why the hell wouldn’t the N.Y. Times want to run a story about this?”

The Times movie section may not have been formally pitched on this story, but why, I’m asking myself, would the paper of record blow it off? Could it be because (I’m just wildly speculating) they’ve basically become a woke activist newspaper, and they don’t want to post an article that might faintly imply some kind of vague endorsement of a nine-second scene in which the N-word is used?

The central issue is nonetheless huge and unmissable — should a half-century old classic film, raw and occasionally profane and, yes, punctuated with racist dialogue here and there, be censored in order to fall in line with current woke dictates — which are only a temporary spasm of passing cultural socialism — or should The French Connection be streamed in its original form, as most anti-censorship types would argue, out of respect for the original creative intent that was decided upon in 1971, even if the director has recently capitulated to the wokesters?

It’s one thing to include a preface or intro of some kind to a recently altered film, explaining the reasons for a deleted scene, and quite another thing to just lop off a nine-second sequence without comment or explanation. It’s too big of a deal to try and sneak this through.

The story appears to have boiled down to one about cowardice, I regret to say. A story in which a willful, hard-charging, tough-minded director — a guy I’ve admired all my life — has suddenly, in his mid ‘80s, became a squishy go-alonger and a weak sister…an obedient slave to woke commissar mandate thinking.

That’s a big effing issue with all kinds of precedent-setting implications, and the N.Y. Times doesn’t want to touch it over…what, racial profiling concerns?

“Boxy Summertime Soothing,” posted on 5.30.20:

David Lean‘s Summertime is a concise story of a 40ish unmarried woman from Ohio (Katharine Hepburn) enjoying her first visit to Venice, Italy, and then falling in love with a covertly married native (Rossano Brazzi). But it’s primarily a glorious atmosphere film — a swoony, Technicolor dreamboat dive into the charms (architectural, aromatic, spiritual) of this fabled city.

The cinematography by Jack Hildyard (The Bridge on the River Kwai) is perfectly framed and lighted, and the fleet cutting by Peter Taylor ensures that each shot is perfectly matched or blended with the next.

HE to Rose “tranny tits” Montoya: In one fell swoop, flashing your boobs on the south lawn of the White House degraded all gay and trans activists across the globe. Indeed, the whole progressive left community. And it certainly degraded President Joe “whoops!” Biden.

It goes without saying that the words “you should be ashamed of yourself” can’t apply because you’re obviously incapable. Either you understand the concept of class or you don’t. You’ve made it clear which camp you’re in, girly.

Female friendo: “Rose said she would not have been in trouble for baring her breasts if she was a straight woman — the hoo-hah is only over the fact that she’s trans. HELLO, YOU BLITHERING IDIOT…you now claim to be a woman so welcome to life as a woman. We can’t and don’t do that!”

John Lennon: “And you think you’re so clever and classless and free / But you’re still fucking peasants as far as I can see.”

The window of a westbound New Jersey Transit train, covered in grease and slime…you can hardly see through it. The maintenance of Metro North trains is much more disciplined. Don’t even mention European trains in the same breath.

I’m still really angry at those Cannes critics who dismissed or otherwise pooh-poohed Jean-Stéphane Sauvaire‘s Black Flies. It’s nothing phenomenal or earth-shattering, but is bruisingly efficient and sufficiently good for what it is — a jarring, hard-hitting, you-are-there NYC paramedic trauma film.

Black Flies occupies the same general atmospheric turf as Martin Scorsese‘s Bringing Out The Dead (’99), which of course was critically praised because critics know they’re obliged to give any Scorsese film the benefit of the doubt and then some.

If Scorsese had never made Bringing Out The Dead but had produced and/or collaborated to some extent on Black Flies, Cannes critics — almost all of them fickle, posturing snobs — would have been much more supportive.