Films and Book

On my recent trip to the 42nd St. NYPL (it has a new name, but it used to be the Mid-Manhattan), I checked out the DVD section.  

I found this 1950 women's prison film, which co-stars Agnes Moorehead as a sympathetic if often powerless prison superintendent.  I didn't recognize her but she later was the mother in the Bewitched sitcom.  Eleanor Parker plays the innocent who becomes hardened.  She later was the baroness in The Sound of Music.  The film is well acted and I liked it.  

I also found this PBS film (based on the book Small Island), which I at first thought I saw a piece of, but probably (?) not.

It is a WWII drama concerning two couples' lives, one a white couple from Britain, the other from British Jamaica.  It is well-acted though translating a long book into a few hours makes a few things a bit abrupt.  The film is well-acted by all involved.  I am most familiar with the husbands, including someone who later was in A United Kingdom, which is based on a true story of an African leader who married a white woman.  

Both women, who have some of the most dramatic moments, were very good too.  I would like to see some more things with Ruth Wilson, who plays the white wife (both women have marriages of convenience though they develop some feelings for their husbands) who has a black child.  She was very good.  

[She was in the Showtime series The Affair, which received good reviews. I believe I saw a bit of it.]

The father is actually a guy the other woman has grown up with and believes was lost in the war.  I don't know if it comes out in the book, but it is never revealed.  We see something near the end (the black couple eventually raises the interracial child)  where a photo is found and we think it is the reveal.  It turns out to be a picture of the mother.  Everything need not be tied into a bow.

I also read After The Miracle: The Political Crusades of Helen Keller.  The subtitle is important.  The book does cover her life in general, including a chapter on her cut-off love affair (Anne Sullivan and her mother stopped the marriage).  But, it is focused on her political crusades.  She was a true blue socialist, including later on supporting communism (if not Stalin).  

I liked the book overall though did feel a bit cheated since I didn't get a complete feel of her life and internal sentiments. The book was not meant to be so, but it would interest me to read more about how she experienced life as a deaf and blind woman.  

The book is appreciated as a human accounting, including showing evidence Anne Sullivan (if not originally on purpose though she probably covered up her role) was to blame for an embarrassing moment where a young Helen put out a story as her own.  

The book is easy to read and has some black-and-white photos.