Paul Newman, doing his best to beautify a dirt road. 

The Long Hot Summer (1958)

The June heat wave, and our temporary lack of a bedroom air conditioner, caused the Siren to wake up thinking of this movie.

Paul Newman is and probably will remain the definitive movie God of Sweat. Even Brando in his prime couldn't touch Newman. Opinions differ as to which film showcases Newman's glow the best. There's Hud, but he's playing a heavy. There's Sweet Bird of Youth, but despite Newman's having the best ab-exercising scene in Hollywood history that's really Geraldine Page's movie. There's Cool Hand Luke, and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, and he even glistens nicely in the endless, bombastic Exodus. I'm going to plump for this one, however.

From the opening scene Newman's special ability to shine is apparent, as he stands glowering while on impromptu trial for barn-burning. Off he goes, cast out of the town, and then you get the fabulous Alex North/Sammy Cahn theme song, crooned by Jimmie Rodgers. I can still sing parts of it: "The long, hot summer, seems to know what a flirt you are ..."

Allegedly this movie is based on The Hamlet and "Barn Burning" by William Faulkner. Don't go reading those, however, thinking you will find anything remotely resembling this movie. It's more like someone cobbled together Tennessee Williams' first drafts, then threw in a dash of Oklahoma! and Picnic for good measure. Despite this weird pastiche of Southern, Western and Midwestern folkways, the script is very good indeed, full of dry humor and biting asides. The acting is pure 1950s High Method, except for Orson Welles, who steals everything but the wallpaper in a role that probably should have gone to Burl Ives.

I never fail get to a huge kick out of The Long, Hot Summer. Newman gets most of the best lines, such as when a potential lynch mob is approaching him and he says, almost plaintively, "Story of my life. Why don't nobody ever wanna talk to me peaceable?" The scenes with Joanne Woodward are full of sexual energy and incredibly romantic. The Cinemascope photography looks great, if you can see it letterboxed instead of the scan-and-pan travesties they usually show on American Movie Classics.

Despite the bizarrely happy ending, the film has a quality of sadness about it, perhaps because the countryside it shows us, before the hideous sprawl of strip malls and subdivisions took over, shrinks day by day.

Anne Bancroft, 1931-2005

"The best way to get most husbands to do something is to suggest that perhaps they're too old to do it."

Toronto Is Nothing Like Paris

But then, neither is New York, except in terms of sophistication.

I just returned from a month in Paris, visiting my husband's family. Paris remains, for me, the most beautiful, civilized and livable city on the planet. I speak French the way George Bush speaks Spanish (or English, for that matter) but Parisians are almost always very kind and polite.

Some Americans cherish a real hatred for France. Chirac is, by most definitions and according to most French people I know, a corrupt, lying embarrassment. When he told us the Iraq war was a lousy idea, however, he was as trustworthy as the Encyclopedia Britannica.

Still, bashing France serves a most useful purpose. The second an American begins to wheeze about lack of gratitude and saving France's collective backside in World War II, you know precisely what you are dealing with: a bore. It is as good as a secret handshake.

I do enjoy comparing some aspects of the U.S. with France, just not the old "what do we owe them for Yorktown, what do they owe us for Omaha Beach" rigamarole. Here are some little things that you might notice on a month-long visit to the in-laws.

Things That Are Better in France

• The food (exceptions noted below).
  
• People's figures.
  
• The architecture.
  
• The health-care system (much better than Canada's, too).
  
• You don't have to wake up and grab a paper to check and see whether someone is down at the local school board trying to ban Darwin or "The Wizard of Oz."

Things That Are Better in the U.S.

• Coffee. A good cup of American coffee is the best. No, I don't want any espresso, and get that Nescafe away from me, now.
  
• Pommes frites need ketchup. One day the French will wake up to this. In the meantime, they have a very bad attitude about ketchup. They shouldn't. Mustard is the French ketchup.
  
• We have better store hours. Parisians are always closing things, often for reasons unfathomable to an American. (Ascension? are you kidding me?)
  
• We have air conditioning and we use it.
  
• We seem to appreciate French perfume more than the French do these days. Practically all I smelled in Paris was Angel, which is the fragrance equivalent of ultra low-rise pants: It is unaccountably but hugely popular, it flatters no one and wore out its welcome almost on arrival. There is much more scent-wearing variety in New York, oddly enough. (Then again, in New York I do hang out with some flagrantly perfume-mad women.)
  

I also discovered an unexpected British flair for an eye-catching in-store display at W.H. Smith in Paris, as you can see below.

The Paris W.H. Smith Displays It All for You

First on the display shelf was this. I have no idea if it's any good.

Then we had this (by a man who spends half his year in France. Which I don't get, at all. I can't stand Texans like Tom DeLay; does that mean I should still take an extended visit to Sugarland?)

And to the right of Chesnoff's minimum opus, the store had placed this. This is the sort of inspired thinking you just don't find at B. Dalton.