Born On This Day- February 3rd... Gertrude Stein

It seems disingenuous to label a work of art charming, but Midnight in Paris has so much charm, so many deft moments, that I felt of being taken to someplace magical. The film is populated with small turns of great actors playing ex-pats & assorted artists, writers & personalities of 1920s Paris.

This film is an enchanted comedy set in Paris about a family that goes there because of business, & a pair of young people who are engaged to be married have experiences there that change their lives. It's about a young writer's love of Paris, & the illusion people have that a life different from theirs would be much better.

The cameos include a perfectly cast Adrien Brody as Salvedor Dalí. emphasizing the accent each time he says his name, Corey Stoll as a sexy, young Hemingway & Kathy Bates as Gertrude Stein. She plays Stein as an Earth-Mother, a no-nonsense, incredibly pragmatic center of artistic activity. her moments in Midnight in Paris are superb. The entire enterprise is as effervescent as champagne. As a fan of Woody Allen's films (especially the films he does not appear in), it is nice to know his work can still intoxicate.

Stein is the sort of author you want people to see you reading when you are in college, or that is how I played it. Stein was a wealthy American art collector & writer who dominated the Paris avant garde in the days of Picasso. She was one of Picasso's boldest collectors, his only real female friend, & the object of one of his most revolutionary paintings. Picasso's Portrait of Gertrude Stein, which hangs in her apartment in the film. She played herself in her literary classic memoir- The Autobiography Of Alice B Toklas that portrays Stein through the eyes of her lover Alice B Toklas.

I noticed one of my kids at work reading Stein for about a week. I couldn’t stand it & at one point asked: “Really? This how you want to spend your 10 minute break, reading Gertrude Stein? Shouldn't you be reading a Twighlight Saga? Well, at least it will make you feel that your break is a half an hour.”

Stein’s work can be exasperating & exhilarating. Her novels, plays, operas, valentines, poems, autobiography, lectures are challenging for me. Often the entrance is not apparent; there is no door. Here is an example, from the poem- If I Told Him: A Completed Portrait of Picasso:

Shutters shut & open so do queens. Shutters shut & shutters & so shutters shut & shutters & so & so shutters & so shutters shut & so shutters shut & shutters and so. & so shutters shut & so & also. & also &

 so &

 so & also.

Exact resemblance to exact resemblance the exact resemblance as exact as a resemblance, exactly as resembling, exactly resembling, exactly in resemblance exactly a resemblance,

 exactly & resemblance.

 For this is so.

 Because.

Stein was born in the USA 138 years ago on this day-February 3rd. Stein died at the age of 72 in Neuilly-sur-Seine & is buried in Paris in the Père Lachaise cemetery. When Stein was being wheeled into the operating room for surgery on her stomach, she asked Toklas: "What is the answer?" Toklas did not reply, Stein: "In that case, what is the question?" There is a monument to Stein on the Upper Terrace of Bryant Park, NYC.

Together, Stein & Toklas hosted a salon in Paris that attracted expatriate American writers: Ernest Hemingway, Paul Bowles, Thornton Wilder & Sherwood Anderson, & painters: Picasso, Matisse, & Braque. Stein & Toklas were a couple for 40 years, until Stein’s death in 1946.