so simple it operates itself
December 10th, 2005 at 08:32 (1940s)
Today’s movie is a rather dark yet very funny movie. The male protagonist plans to murder his wife and we see him imagining three different ways to do so. But when he wants to turn his phantasies into reality he fails. He just isn’t able to operate the Simplicitas Home Recorder, that should be so simple it operates itself and that’s the crucial element in his plan of a perfect murder.
And the simplified diagram on page 6 of the user’s manual is so simple a child can use it:
If you still have no clue about the movie then maybe this picture will help you…captured just before our protagonist fills in the last name of his wife.
The director later said in his memoirs about this movie, that was a flop at its time, “The audiences laughed from the beginning to the end of the picture. And they went home with nothing. Because nothing had happened.”
Still no clue? Then be vulgar, by all means, but let me hear that brazen laugh!
If you ever meet someone to whom you can say “A thousand poets dreamed a thousand years, then you were born, my love”, then “halali”! It’s even worth hearing “Unfaithfully Yours” at some point.
Halali? Have you just returned from a hunt?
Here are more infos about Preston Sturges’ Unfaithfully Yours:
http://www.crit...ease.asp?id=292
“Halali” is something we say in Greek, although I’m not sure it’s a Greek word, for an inconvenience or a sacrifice which is worth enduring.It is the epitome of a “rock lifestyle” as we say in Greek or a “jazz lifestyle” as it would be internationally understood. Our great Melina Merkouri said that once about her terminal lung cancer when so many people expressed their sincere concern about her health.
We use Halali in German too…although usually only hunters use it. Halali is of French origin.
Jacques Espée de Selincourt said in his book Le Parfait Chasseur (Paris 1683): on l’emploie le mot halali pendant la chasse pour exciter et animer les chiens à la poursuite de l’animal, which means the hunters used halali to mush the dogs that chase the animals.
If you understand German, here is a detailed article about the origins of Halali.
The “halali” I was talking about actually has Arabic origins “helal”, incorporated into the Turkish language as “halal” to end up in Greek as “χαλάλι” . We’ve lent so many words to other languages, so we had to borrow a few from others.