I know it's been a lot of pictures around here lately and not so much text, but I could not let today pass without this promotional photo for Anthony Mann's The Fall of the Roman Empire (1964), because the poses and arrangement of the cast make it look—now—like the teaser for a season of TV that never was.



I dreamed last night of watching a movie from the late 1950's or early 1960's adapted from a beloved British memoir, the young adult narrator looking back on her wartime childhood. Her father had been commander of a T-class submarine, which I hadn't realized I remembered anything about until I woke and verified they were not an invention of my dreaming brain, unlike the film or in fact all of the actors in it. It was black and white, with kitchen sink cinematography that did not match the accents. I got the book out afterward from the children's room in the Cambridge Public Library that hasn't existed since the renovation in 2009. Curiously, that did not tell me I was asleep, although some of the battlefield humor made me impressed no overprotective adult had tried to get it pulled from the children's shelves.