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Uplifting Thoughts for the Isolated and Depressed in Times of Plague

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And again in absolute contrast in order to calm down feelings after losing card games,
showing and proudly presenting the very high end of magical European orchestra entertainment:

... with Hannibal Lecter - hrm - Anthony Hopkins in the audience

... with an almost criminal staff in the background



... with a dead man hanging above the audience ... hard manners in the Wild West of this Viking's orchestra in Denmark!
 
When I was a teen, I thought Debra Paget was so cute and so beautiful and so sexy. And I only saw this dance years later. I don't know German and don't care. I do admire the will-power of the seated men!
That costume! Yes, its a bodysuit. But those bare hips, the suggestions!!! The widely spread legs!!! Her very sensual motions!!!! :very_hot: :very_hot:
 
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I have to search for this movie in my archives as soon as possible in order to find out what really happened to the poor snake and to the poor "Tiger of Eshnapur"!
There were two movies filmed in India by Fritz Lang ("Metropolis") and this is the continuation of "Tiger of Es(c)hnapur". This dance was shortened in the US-version in 1959, as far as I know. Is this the complete version ?
 
I have to search for this movie in my archives as soon as possible in order to find out what really happened to the poor snake and to the poor "Tiger of Eshnapur"!
There were two movies filmed in India by Fritz Lang ("Metropolis") and this is the continuation of "Tiger of Es(c)hnapur". This dance was shortened in the US-version in 1959, as far as I know. Is this the complete version ?
I believe there are two versions on YouTube and this is the longer. What does the priest say to her at the beginning?
 
A part of the sentence is missing and I understand only "Es scheint, Du hast schwere Schuld auf Dich geladen ... wird Dich richten!" (= "You seem to have burdened a heavy guilt on you ... will judge you!"), but I think, the priest tells her that her dance in front of the snakes is a "Gottesurteil" (= God's judgement) and if she dances so that the snake which is an instrument of the Goddess behind, does not attack her, she is free to go.
 
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Yes, the German description of this movie mentions a "Gottesurteil", in which she has to dance in front of a giant cobra, but the reigning Maharaja Chandra saves her life in order to marry her.
But I still don't see what really happened to the poor cobra ...
According to the dialogue at the end, the Maharadja Chandra seemed to have decapitated the snake (?) and the priest says, that he did a crime because even he (=Chandra) has to obey to the will of the Goddess. By the way, Chandra is an unfriendly despot in the movie and no one I would like to marry if I were a woman.
 
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By the way, I simply MUST mention, that I still am and always was wondering how Ennio Morricone got the ideas of making such great music like that one above for "Westerns" like "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly".
As long as you do not see it, you do not know how many persons are making this music and these sounds.
But when you are a composer, how do get an orchestra for the first time to make music like this?
The members in a state orchestra are usually all highly paid experts for their music instruments and great vocal solists and now imagine, when they are possibly asked on the telephone by their family far away after this performance in the Opera of the capital:
"So, you were in a such long education in the State's Musical Conservatorium and now, you are happy and you are well paid, you said.
So, tell me, what nice musical art did you do this evening?"
1st Soprano: "I sang "WA WA WAAAA" and whistled as perfect as never before ..."
2nd Soprano: "I sang OO OOO OOOO!"
Male choir: "We sang "yo yo yo ECHO..."
Female choir: "We sang "AH AH AH"..."
Guy in orchestra: "I slapped 2 planks together..."
"WOW!!!"
 
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Yes, the German description of this movie mentions a "Gottesurteil", in which she has to dance in front of a giant cobra, but the reigning Maharaja Chandra saves her life in order to marry her.
But I still don't see what really happened to the poor cobra ...
According to the dialogue at the end, the Maharadja Chandra seemed to have decapitated the snake (?) and the priest says, that he did a crime because even he (=Chandra) has to obey to the will of the Goddess. By the way, Chandra is an unfriendly despot in the movie and no one I would like to marry if I were a woman.

Hooray, I finally know what happened to the poor snake, because my most loved cultural French-German TV station ARTE broadcast both movies in June 2015 and I am collecting almost every evening & night movie from them. Both movies were international French-German-Italian co-productions with artists from many countries, filmed on real locations in India's Rajasthan, even on the Lake Palace in Udaipur, which is also the background palace of some scenes in the James Bond movie "Octopussy".
Ashampoo_Snap_2020.06.29_11h12m24s_015_.jpg Ashampoo_Snap_2020.06.29_11h11m43s_014_.jpg

But first the poor snake's story: When Seetha (Debra Paget) loses her religious trance because she had a sexual relationship with the German ingenieur / engineer Harald Berger (Paul Hubschmid), which is also the reason why she had to undergo this God's judgement with the dance in front of the snake, ...
Ashampoo_Snap_2020.06.29_11h04m18s_002_.jpg Ashampoo_Snap_2020.06.29_11h07m05s_006_.jpg Ashampoo_Snap_2020.06.29_11h04m41s_003_.jpg Ashampoo_Snap_2020.06.29_11h05m34s_005_.jpg

... the Goddess and the snake get angry:
Ashampoo_Snap_2020.06.29_11h07m59s_007_.jpg Obviously, this pitiable snake had a bad dentist, but the Maharaja Chandra really loves and wants her and saves her life by jumping to the snake and throwing a heavy metal or ceramic (?) "fire container" on her head. This is too much for the poor snake:
Ashampoo_Snap_2020.06.29_11h08m48s_009_.jpg Ashampoo_Snap_2020.06.29_11h09m16s_010_.jpg

The exotic backgrounds are probably the best in both movies which are - from a today's point of view - really "kitschy" fairy-tale stories with some horror elements and some scenes which are of a "unfreiwillige Komik" (=involuntary humor) as we say in German. For example, Seetha did not really know of her partly European origin until the heroic German engineer shows her in the water of the palace fountains her rather European face with her typical European eyes (I turned the picture around) and they did not seem to have had mirrors in the palace before, and no one ever told her this secret that she had "un-Indian" eyes, did they?

Ashampoo_Snap_2020.06.29_11h16m29s_020A__ji.jpg

Apart from the story of both films, their background and the dancing Debra Paget are really the best and probably the only reason for a relative success of these movies in Europe in 1959 / 1960 and Debra Paget had to dance a lot, even in the first movie, of which I show some additional pictures in the following posting.
 
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OH, I made possibly a mistake, which makes the understanding a bit difficult, I think:

Obviously, this pitiable snake had a bad dentist, but the Maharaja Chandra really loves and wants her (= the dancer SEETHA, NOT THE SNAKE! :smile:) and saves her life by jumping to the snake and throwing a heavy metal or ceramic (?) "fire container" on her head.


By the way, at the right time, India could be very "uplifting" for people who were brave enough to come into this exotic world and to stay there for a while. There is a funny and true story about one of the most famous German journalists after WW II: Hans Walter Berg, who became the first German TV expert for Asia.

He spoke perfect English and learned some other Asian languages, so he was the first German journalist, who made trips and long voyages through the whole of Asia since 1952, took New Delhi as his "residence" and making the first great and internationally award-winning TV reports from India for Germany.
The funny part of the story is now, that both "Germanys" had relatively good relations to India because the Indian government wanted to stay independent from the superpowers USA, Soviet Union and China, so the Indians often tried to get know-how from industrial states which they regarded to be somewhere in between, but all the superpowers and also some European industrial states like France and Italy etc. wanted to make business and good political relations for the future with this giant state India.

The most European journalists who wanted to make interviews with persons like Charles de Gaulle or leaders of the superpowers had to ask for interviews with those persons via long-lasting diplomatic channels; plannings for such interviews took months and were sometimes very difficult.
But Hans Walter Berg sometimes called in by telephone to the German TV centers in Berlin, Hamburg, Frankfurt, Köln etc. and asked the political TV-chiefs there rather in a casual way:
"Are you interested in one of my interviews with de Gaulle, Khrushchev or Eisenhower?"
"You are joking, right?"
"No!"
"How do you do that? We are waiting for something like that for months, if not years?!"
"India is relatively cheap at the moment and I can afford here in my hotel sometimes the princely suite next to the imperial suite, and guess who are usually the international guests here next to my suite. Sometimes, I meet such thirsty presidents in my hotel at the bar and simply ask them!"
"Noooo, this cannot be true!"
"But yes, it is!"

And because you could really often meet Hans Walter Berg at the bar of his luxury hotels in India or elsewhere in Asia (he only lived there in luxury hotels!), his German colleagues called him in a mixture of envy and admiration "Hans Walter Berg, the Maharaja of Whiskeypour"!
 
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I do admire the will-power of the seated men!
The cobra was pretty well-behaved too! :p

It occurs to me I missed out on an interesting career, as a professional temptress,
testing the chastity of celibate monks in eastern monasteries! :D
 
The cobra was pretty well-behaved too! :p

It occurs to me I missed out on an interesting career, as a professional temptress,
testing the chastity of celibate monks in eastern monasteries! :D
The trouble is, however, is that if you succeed, even if you resist his advances, it's always YOUR fault (never his) and you get fed to the cobra. (I thought it was a fairly unrealistic cobra, frankly.)
 
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