Switzerland also produced Rousseau, and he dedicated the _Discourse on the Origin and Foundations of Inequality Among Men_ to the Republic of Geneva: <http://www.constitution.org/jjr/ineq_01.htm>. A rather fulsome praise, I must say. Was Rousseau looking for a job in Geneva?
BTW, Switzerland has its share of notable film-makers as well: Jean-Luc Godard, Alain Tanner, & Daniel Schmid.
***** 2000 San Francisco International Film Festival-Part 7
Preserving the utopian moment
An interview with Daniel Schmid, director of Beresina or the Last Days of Switzerland
By David Walsh 8 June 2000
...Beresina or the Last Days of Switzerland is a wonderful film. It is a malicious and unsparing attack on the Swiss bourgeoisie, its sacred cows, its sentimentality, its conspiracies, its essential criminality. And at the same time this is a work that somehow gives everyone, even the worst human specimens, his or her due. It is not a cruel work.
At the center of the film is a beautiful, naive Russian girl, Irina (Elena Panova), whose principal ambition in life is to obtain a Swiss passport. She works as a prostitute, or, more precisely, as a kind of performer of sexual theater. Her well-to-do clientele mostly get their kicks from role-playing. An aging general, for example, will knock on her door and when it's opened, demand to know, "Are you Fritzie Ochsenbein?" Irina replies "Yes," he points a gun at her (loaded with blanks) and fires it, and she drops to the floor "dead." They play this game over and over.
This same general strings her along with promises about Swiss citizenship. So does an ambitious couple, a fashion designer ("It's nice to have so many mirrors -- one is never alone") and a prominent lawyer ("All Swiss are a threat to the security of the country"). They ask Irina to spy on her clients for them. They pump the poor girl for information and use it to further their careers. When she's served her purpose, they arrange for an expulsion order to be issued. Irina has 14 days to leave Switzerland. Hell hath no fury, however, and the Russian girl unwittingly sets in motion a right-wing political conspiracy -- in whose organization "her" general has played a central role -- that brings about the end of the Swiss republic.
Even then, however, the bank director is still in charge of things. His world outlook is summed up in a conversation with a muckraking journalist, after a corruption scandal has erupted: "Money is neutral.... The same dollar extorted yesterday by the Mafia, tomorrow brings revelations about their connections with our economic leaders. The earth is round, Mr. Bürki. Neither good nor bad, it goes round, that's all."...
<http://www.wsws.org/articles/2000/jun2000/sff7-j08.shtml> *****
I don't think _Beresina_ is as wonderful as David Walsh says it is, but it's probably still worth watching once, if only for the work of its cinematographer Renato Berta. -- Yoshie
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