Manolo says, it is Tuesday, time to see what the Manolo is…

Listening to…

Reading…

Watching…

The disturbing news that Steve Carell was working on the remake of the classic French play and movie, The Dinner Game, (to be disastrously entitled Dinner for Schmucks) has sent the Manolo back to the original, which he found it to be as hilarious and as French as ever.

Did the Manolo say “French”? He meant “Super French”. From the beginning to the end, The Dinner Game is perhaps the Frenchiest movie ever made, which is why it is difficult to imagine it being remade as the American slapstick comedy. (But, one should never underestimate the persistent folly of the American movie industry.)

Speaking of the French and their Frenchiness, the movie also reminded the Manolo of something his good friend the Herr Professor Doktor B. P. von Korncrake (who tells the Manolo that his memoirs are now 90% complete and will soon be ready for publication) has written about the differences between the French and the Germans.

“The French,” I said, beginning the key paragraphs of my declamation, “invent all sorts of novel theories and schemes for ordering life and analyzing the world — existentialism, postmodernism, postcolonialism, all French — and yet these theories remain purely theoretical. The French never attempt to apply a single one to everyday living. They do not live by what they preach. And why should they? The French have the best cuisine in the world, their wine is excellent, their literature grand, their cinema tolerable, their workweek short, and their women amoral. What could they possibly change for the better?”

“The Germans,” I continued, warming to my subject, “are the exact opposite. They devise no grand theories of their own (even Fascism was imported from the Italians), and yet they are credulous, nay, enthusiastic about the theories of others, to the point that they often seek to implement those theories as part of their everyday lives. My prime example? That buffoon, Herman Hesse, who goes to Sri Lanka for a vacation and comes back with a dish towel wrapped around his head, channeling the Buddha.”

The good Professor Doktor has referred to this latter phenomenon as the “dangerously credulous streak in the German character”.