Spring Breakdown (2010), by Melody Carlson, is one of the short books in a series, for young adults, about six teenaged girls.  As a brief summary inside the book puts it:  “The wealthy fashion students in Mrs. Carter’s boardinghouse spend a quiet spring break in Florida until . . .”  Well, until spring breakdown hits.  Fun time is over.

The girls are typical teenagers except that two or three of them are Christians, among them DJ and Taylor.  Like the unsaved girls (and lover-boys), these two have their faults, albeit for Taylor one of them isn’t boozing now that she is a spiritually delivered ex-alcoholic.  THIS isn’t ordinary, but all kinds of ordinary incidents roll into this little bailiwick.  The only bailiwick the girls know, it is a mixed bag of the mundane and the fleshly.  There is a Rockabilly dance.  DJ and Taylor do some harmless skinny dipping at night.  Two other girls, Eliza and Casey, get drunk after a bumpy photo shoot.  There are, however, some spiritual and emotional challenges for DJ (the main character) pushing to the side all the kids-will-be-kids occurrences.

Carlson’s prose is imperfect—for one thing, she keeps misusing “hopefully”—but her narrative is entertaining and her dialogue is serviceable.  It’s a Christian book, but not a preachy one.  And it’s meant to appeal to a broad audience.  I would rather see devout teens reading Spring Breakdown than buying a fundamentally insignificant Adele or Beyoncé CD.

Cover via Amazon

The commercial Western novels from earlier decades usually had their cowboy heroes fall in love with a young woman who had not yet married.  The 1956 Western movie, Seven Men from Now—it too is commercial, of course—offers a hero with a sure liking for a young woman who is married, but he staunchly refuses to start anything.  A man of principle, he is played by Randolph Scott, and the seven men of the title are the gold robbers who murdered Scott’s wife and are now being pursued by him.

‘Tis strange that Ben Stride, Scott’s character, doesn’t appear to be suffering much over his wife’s death, and neither does the aforementioned young woman (Gail Russell) seem devastated by the vile murder of her husband (Walter Reed).  It’s as though the producers opposed any big-deal, negative emotion (and if they hadn’t, could Scott have delivered?).

All the same, this Budd Boetticher Western, written by Burt Kennedy, is dramatically piercing.  A perfect, and not strident, performance comes from Lee Marvin with his big personality.  Russell, Reed and others provide a handful of not-bad performances. . . In more ways than one, Seven Men is colorful, another ’50s picture proving how well literal color works for Westerns.  Above all, it is just as entertaining as those Western novels from earlier decades—those I have read, anyway.

The nocturnal robber in the 1948 He Walked by Night ends up murdering a police officer and thereby brings down on himself a load of professional energy for his seizure.  Played by Richard Basehart in what is supposed to be a true story, Roy The Killer is a loner obsessed with electronics, for, after all, he himself is an alienating machine.  No emotion, no conscience.  He even shoots and leaves paralyzed a second cop.

He is L.A.’s public enemy no. 1 (so it seems) and gets his comeuppance in the huge dark city sewers.  The pursuit there is a visually striking scene, with direction by Alfred L. Werker and an uncredited Anthony Mann.  Crane Wilbur is the main writer for this filmic procedural with good gunfights.

Cover of I Fidanzati – Criterion Collection

Giovanni and Liliana, engaged to be married, are capable of bringing joy to each other, but . . . it might not happen for a long while.  Or it will happen only periodically.  The couple must be temporarily separated from each other because they cannot afford to marry and Giovanni, much to Liliana’s sadness, has agreed to a welding job in Sicily.  The film—Italy’s The Fiances (I Fidanzati, 1963)—then zeroes in on Giovanni’s solitary life in a mundane Sicilian town.  I mentioned joy—but the town offers little of it.  It can be quite dreary.

The Fiances was scripted and directed by Ermanno Olmi, and it is tempting to think that while making it he was in love with Loredana Detto, the actress in Olmi’s Il Posto, whom he later married, and that this accounts for the film’s eventual romantic feeling.  Expressed here, in fact, is the need for the certainty of love (romantic feeling or no).  Giovanni and Liliana, we see, are more than the weak and financially poor persons they necessarily know themselves to be.  They are fiancés, and to Olmi—a devout Catholic, in fact—this makes all the difference in the world.

Starring Carlo Cabrini and Anna Canzi, the picture is short and artistic, gentle and tasteful.  It has more vigor than an early ’60s Antonioni film, but is more restrained and indeed smarter than a Fellini film.  Few Italian products nowadays surpass it.

(In Italian with English subtitles)