Sunday, April 9, 2023

Penny Cooper Triumphant, III

It's Easter, time for the third annual Penny-Cooper-Triumphant Sydney Carton Memorial Tumbrel Ride. (Two earlier tumbrels.)
 I took my own advice and dared to do it badly, which meant everything is hot-glued together, and ... It works! This year, the tumbrel rolls.
It is a far, far better thing I did...


I hope the 4-second video above works. Here's a still photo too.

Two people asked me what a tumbrel is. I was surprised they didn't know. I'd had to read Tale of Two Cities in high school English, and tumbrels feature.

I looked the word up and learned something though---a tumbrel has two wheels because it's essentially a big wheelbarrow--you can tip it to load and unload manure and other farm stuff. Or to load people to take to the guillotine.
Here's one behind Dirk Bogarde/Sydney Carton:

This, the 1958 film of The Tale of Two Cities, is worth watching. It's free on youtube: www.youtube.com/watch?v=9zxfDt5Ejts.
It'd be just another costume drama where even the poor people are spotless, if not for Dirk Bogarde.
Holy Toledo, he's like a mongoose among figurines.

I also learned, separately, that this film was from Bogarde's pretty-boy-plays-doctor days, like
Richard Chamberlain as Dr Kildare.
I didn't know he started that way--I only know him from his later European Art Film/Sadistic/Seductive?-Nazi work.
Actually, mostly the first category, especially Death in Venice. I never watched his stuff in the second category, The Damned and The Night Porter, but I've read about it. 

Anyway, Happy Easter!