Light, glass, dust : Aesychlus meets Strindberg in Chess of The Wind* (1976) (work in progress)

This is a response (work in progress) to Chess of The Wind** (1976), streamed during London Film Festival 2020

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2019 (17 to 24 October)
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13 October

This is a first-blush response (work in progress) to Chess of The Wind (1976),
streamed during London Film Festival 2020**, in a 4K restoration, on BFI Player

Not, as one might have predicted from the title, a re-run of Victor Sjõstrõm, but equally not nearly as Bergmanesque as seeing people's comments in passing had led one to believe :

Yes, the finery was gorgeous, and the shots of the house*** are almost too exquisitely set up, but that is only to expose a contrasting brutality in self-interest and settling scores that smacks of ancient origins in works such as The Oresteia. Thematically, Bergman did employ such primal sources, but this film does not try to reproduce either his feel for doing so, or his look - if Bergman makes things appear staged and / or unrelaxed, he does so for other purposes.


Lady Aghdas, with her cat and acquired 'flail' (a miniature ball and chain), is perhaps a little too much like a Bond villain, and Shaban, one of her stepfather's adoptive sons, seems modelled on Marcel Proust (for looks), but this is a film where two or three major characters each have a held (i.e. deliberate) moment of looking straight to camera, so it would be unrealistic to try to construe the film-making as naturalism, or in any way an unknowing enterprise. Therefore, without explicitly saying that the figures depicted have archetypal qualities or might have populated Mt Olympus, there are folkloric or fairy-tale elements (such as of djinns or Bluebeard's castle), and Chess also has us flirt with the notion of Lady Macbeth's mental lability, or of Dostoyevsky's Raskolnikov, cracking under investigative pressure from Porphyry.


For some, a film such as this, and the finding of the negatives and making a 4K restoration, will be wonderful in their own terms ; for others, who think it good, it may stand more as an artefact of history, not in seeming 'dated' as such, but in pointing to the work of others who may have seen it in some degraded form (or just heard tell of it) in between, and to other cinemas (The Handmaiden (2016), for example, shares ground with it - as did, before it, The Wicker Man (1973) ?)



[...]



End-notes :

* Or The Chess-Game of The Wind ?

** An artefact of the streaming, on #UCFF's set-up, was to introduce a hiccup at what seemed one-second intervals (built-in thinking time, or an involuntary Verfremdungseffekt, for a reviewer ?) :

Unfortunately, using the @BFI Player demonstrated, yesterday and to-day*, that 'blasting brilliant new cinema into your front room' won't work effectively with #UCFF's set-up.

* Although not the latest cinema, but, respectively, Chess of The Wind (1976) and The Cheaters (1929).

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) October 14, 2020

*** Whose exterior we finally see properly at the end, before the camera lifts off, and pointedly surveys the sky-line, which is clearly contemporary to the film's being made. (Arguably, after a disappearance into the hinterground of a character in whose look A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night (2014) seems rooted, the shot could have been more effective with an elevation to take in the façade, but without the pan (less is more ?) ?)


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Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)

Money well spent ?

Passport to Poland

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2014
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20 May

Got your Zubrowka passport, and ready to stick up for somebody else... ? pic.twitter.com/bdZc7OXnmM

— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) May 17, 2017

Passport to Poland

To @UKIP with [g]love - with a silent 'g', more of a gauntlet really...

UK border control. A man stands in front of an official, who is behind a desk.

MAN

(Indignantly.) What do you mean, I’m Polish ? (With pride.) I was born in Braintree !

BORDER OFFICIAL

Do you have proof of that, sir ? (Man goes to interrupt, silenced by a finger.) By which I mean, are you carrying your birth-certificate with you… ?

MAN

No, but if you let me through, I could go home and get it. (The official just looks at him, almost pityingly.) But I suppose everyone says that… (Pause. Suddenly.) I know – what if I called my boss !

BORDER OFFICIAL

Sorry, sir – your passport states that you’re Polish (Man goes to interrupt, silenced by a finger.) – and so, I suspect, are the people I take to be your wife and daughters behind you. (A look silences a further attempt.)

Next in the queue, a woman in a cardigan and sandals, with a five-year-old pulling on her arm, and an eleven-year-old standing bored beside her, idly playing with her pigtails (as her iPad had to be switched off).

BORDER OFFICIAL

(Sing-song voice.) How is 'your boss' going to change that ?

(Abruptly, and without compassion.) Do you think that ‘your boss’ would prefer to deny knowing you to facing any 'difficult' questions ?

MAN

(Thinks, hesitates.) But…

BORDER OFFICIAL

Please ask your family – in your own language, if you like (The man looks surprised, but says nothing.) – to come over here with me. (He gestures to a waiting-area to one side, set out with a desk and chairs, and goes over to it with the passport.)

MAN

(Turns and speaks to them. Under his voice. Failing to interject any feeling of calm.) Don’t worry, dear – or you, or you. As you’ve heard, just some new procedure – picked out at random for some stringent checks – (As they approach.) just need to humour this chap, who’s pretending to think we’re Polish.

BORDER OFFICIAL

I’m not (The woman hands the other passports to him. He glances at them.) – pretending – to think that – you’re all Polish. You are all Polish !

WOMAN

(Indignantly.) But I’m a vicar’s daughter – from Brentwood ! (As the official looks at her.) And, no, I don’t have my birth-certificate, either…

BORDER OFFICIAL

Doesn’t matter, ma’am – you’re Polish now, and, to be frank, you need to accept going back to your homeland, rather than trying to sneak into England to set up a car-wash ! (Woman goes to say something, but cannot think what to say.)

Unless, although you’ve all got Polish passports, there is something that you can tell me to change my mind…

(Looks directly at the man.) And, no, I don’t mean that little question about what my wife likes to drink – or have I ever been to Norfolk, where you’ve got a lovely second home… !

MAN

(Getting up courage.) Now, look here – I’m going to complain to my MP !

BORDER OFFICIAL

Well, sir… (Flicks through the passport.) You can, of course, do that, but it seems that your MP is in Gdansk, where you now live.

WOMAN

But I’ve never even been to Gdansk ! (On the edge of tears.) Who would have thought that our holiday in Venice would end like this !

YOUNGER DAUGHTER

(Cackling.) Venethia, Venethia ! (Woman hushes her. Nonetheless.) Grand–ay, Grand–ay ! Venethia !

WOMAN

(To elder daughter.) Please take Ruth for a little walk – to explore that corner. (In angry response to elder daughter’s malevolent stare.) Or something ! Go ! ! (Over the top, the younger daughter babbles a convincing case for obeying.) Can’t you see how serious this is ! (Elder daughter trails her off, shoulders hunched.)

MAN, WOMAN

(Together.) But what has happened ? (She alone.) How did we leave with British passports… (He alone.) but they’re Polish ones when we come back. (Suddenly. Together.) Someone at the hotel !

BORDER OFFICIAL

(Shakes his head.) Let me explain it to you. (They nod. Baldly.) Do you remember that you decided – as you only had four months left to run on them – to renew your passports for this trip ?

MAN

Yes, but--- (The official puts his finger to his lips.)

BORDER OFFICIAL

Your wife had noticed that they were actually cheaper than a year ago (She nods.), and you thought it as well to renew them now, just in case (He nods.) – you both thought that it ‘made sense’.

(They both nod.)

WOMAN

But what’s this got… ? (Loudly.) I just want to go home to our house in Brent Pelham – and unpack our cases !

ELDER DAUGHTER

(Decides to join in. Calls out.) I’ve got to be back at six – Naomi’s calling for me. (Unfortunately for her, her sister has swept some things off a desk onto the floor, and is in more need of her attention.)

BORDER OFFICIAL

(Sternly.) Just listen to me. Who filled in the passport renewals ? (Man raises his hand.) And you read the guidance booklet ?

MAN

Yes, yes I did. (Hesitates.) Maybe not all of it, but I did. (Explains.) I had to.

BORDER OFFICIAL

What about the footnote to the footnote on page 38 ? (Man looks blank.) It says, in layman’s terms, that you need to tick the box underneath where you sign, in section 11, if you do not wish to retain British nationality. (Man looks sheepish, woman reproachful.)

People who tick that box get allocated to countries with ‘spare capacity’, and, again under the policies that you voted for, you then have to prove an extremely good reason to be allowed back into the UK.

(To the woman.) Did neither of you (To the man.) look at these passports, (Back to her.) along with your itinerary and other travel documents (Back to him.) before you made ready to go ?

MAN

(Shakes his head.)

Didn’t you even wonder why the colour of your passports was different, or they had a different crest on the front ? Too embarrassed by the photo… ?

MAN

(Pause. Disbelieving.) So you mean that our own country has kicked us out – given us a different nationality – in a country where we have no (Judders with each thought.) friends – job – family – school – home !

WOMAN

(Grief-stricken.) Oh, George – what have you done ! Was this because you skimped, and didn’t get the form checked at the post office ?!

MAN

(Ignores the accusation.) No… – wait a moment, she was a bit knowing at when I asked for the forms over the counter – said was I sure that… in case… I didn’t want more than one for each of us…

BORDER OFFICIAL

If you’d paid to have the forms checked, they would have been bound to ask you whether you no longer wanted to be British…

(Folds his arms. Sighs.) As it is…

WOMAN

(Not really believing all this.) But this is ridiculous ! When we voted not to have so many East Europeans here, we didn’t mean us !

BORDER OFFICIAL

Well, ma’am… (Momentary pause. Slightly condescendingly.) It’s not for me to say that no one learns lessons from history, but…

MAN

(With venom.) Oh, spare us your analysis of the origins of Kristallnacht ! (Official shrinks, for the first time thinking anything of his prey. Very loudly.) God, there must be some way through this Nonsense !! (To the woman.) Have you ever heard anything so crazy : they deem us no longer British because, on a form to renew a British passport, I tick some bloody stupid box that apparently says I’d rather be Croatian – or Czech !

BORDER OFFICIAL

Now that you put it like that, sir---

WOMAN

(With fury.) Yes, we do put it like that !


(Gesturing wildly, and overacting just a little bit.) We’re not about to let everything that we have be stolen – just because some dimwit government thought it a clever wheeze to let us leave the country, travelling on some gimcrack set of bogus papers !

BORDER OFFICIAL

Well---

MAN, WOMAN

(Together.) Aha ! (Man.) There’s nothing that you can say now, man – (Woman.) we know that your heart’s not in it !

BORDER OFFICIAL

(Sobs.) It’s true – I thought that I was better than this – tough as old boots. (Heaves his heart out.)

MAN

(Bracingly.) This is all very well, man, but pull yourself together –

(Gestures to the border.) or none of us will get out of here with honour.

BORDER OFFICIAL

(Self-pityingly.) You’re right, you’re right – it’s just that I thought that it would be a cinch to enforce these new rules…

WOMAN

Look, never mind that – we don’t want an apology, we---

ELDER DAUGHTER

(Calls out. To woman.) Look, I’m not even a registered child-minder, you know, and how much longer do I have to---

MAN

We’ll be with you in a minute – just stop Ruth playing with whatever she’s got in---

WOMAN

Wait a moment ! That’s the passports – we don’t want her eating those !

BORDER OFFICIAL

Don’t worry, ma’am. The passports are quite safe here (Gestures.), for what they’re worth, but… – do you mind if I see what she’s got ?

MAN, WOMAN

(Together.) Be my guest !

WOMAN

(Calls out. To elder daughter.) Go back and join your sister a moment. (To man.) He’s won over… but where do we go from here ?

BORDER OFFICIAL

(Returning.) Sir, what did you do with the old British passports when they were returned to you ? (Woman looks quizzical.) Put them somewhere safe ?

MAN

No, I don’t honestly remember seeing them – they didn’t come at the same time as (Gesturing at the Polish ones.) these.

WOMAN

(Uncertainly.) But didn’t Ruth ask if she could have them… ? And you said Yes, they were no use to us… ?

MAN

Yes, that’s possible…

BORDER OFFICIAL

I think that you’re right, ma’am, and that you did say so, sir. (Pause.) At any rate, your daughter must have put them in her bag before you went to Venice – and has just taken the opportunity to play with them (He waves them in the air.) now !

MAN, WOMAN

(Hesitantly.) Do you mean… ?

BORDER OFFICIAL

Yes, although they’ve been cancelled, I have a discretion to consider the unexpired portion of ‘your Britishness’ still valid, and, of course, I shall !

WOMAN

(Approaching the daughters with the man. To elder daughter.) Come, Abigail – we need to get back for that lift---

MAN

(To younger daughter. Catching her up in his arms.) And you, Ruth, can have that pony thing you’ve been wanting !


They re-join the official, and shake hands and exchange hugs all around.

BORDER OFFICIAL

Take care of these, now, and book an appointment with your MP as soon as you can – if you’ve got a good one, they’ll want to know all about it, sir, ma’am ! (He leads them back to the border, and lets them through.)

(As they walk away. Shakes head.) I’m just too soft-hearted, me – they were Polish, bang to rights !



ENDS

© Copyright Belston Night Works 2013

#UCFF sent Passport to Poland to @rocliffeforum - an evaluator missed the #EU point (the report's kept somewhere) :https://t.co/Et6IzG1aRo

— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) October 31, 2017

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Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)

A word about legacies, cultural, scientific or otherwise

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2012
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7 May (revised, 2 October 2020)

A legacy, for all that people like to use the word when someone famous dies, just means a type of gift – specifically, a gift made on death, i.e. by will, and, unlike a devise (q.v.), typically money (if not an item of personal property).

To that extent, it is right to think of a legacy as a gift that relates to a person’s death, but it would only, say, be a true legacy if Richard Attenborough died, and he had decided to leave millions to fund the future of The Royal Court (a general legacy), or some valuable artwork, which it hangs (or stands) in its foyer (a specific legacy (or specific bequest)).

As it is, with the death of Ray Harryhausen, we are being urged to remember – if we ever knew that he had anything to do with it – his work on Star Wars, for example, but calling that a legacy cannot be even a figurative way of talking about what he did in his life :

1. Self-evidently, Harryhausen made that contribution decades ago,

2. Equally self-evidently, people built on it in the following months and years, and

3. Harryhausen's death did not make a gift of this and all the other things that he did for cinema, but, rather, it is a tribute or a memorial to him for people to be made aware of them


And why else do I question talking about a legacy per se ? Well, unlike a person who is free to refuse to accept a legacy or to give it to someone else, the contribution made by this director is more or less in the past – we can restore his or her films and hold retrospectives to re-evaluate them, but we can even do so when that person is alive (e.g. Tony Garnett at the @BFI), without waiting for death.

That embodies another reason that X’s legacy is the wrong way to think about it. If X leaves a gift, X specifies what the gift is, for it to go to A, and what A receives is – bad will-drafting apart – what X intended. So-called legacies in cultural, scientific, artistic worlds aren’t like that, because A. A. Milne and Tove Jansson did not choose to be remembered for their work for children, and that is more like treasuring some contributions and forgetting others.

In summary, Harryhausen probably did not try to choose what will be remembered, and film buffs urging this or that on us is more like a bossy treasuring, a curatorship of his life and (perceived) achievements, rather than a legacy.

Has all that 'excitement' about the proper way to note #Thatcher's passing itself just passed off - as if it had been nothing ?
— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) May 7, 2013

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The Answer to Everything ? (#ATEOpera)

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2012
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1 May

On Thursday last week, I went to the British Film Institute (@BFI) with the intention of watching a matinee and redeeming a complimentary ticket (issued because of the out-of-synch screening of Underground) : because of some conference, there was no matinee, and I couldn’t find the ticket, but none of that turned out to matter :

I bought a ticket instead to see Streetwise Opera’s (@streetwiseopera’s) production, with sections on film, at some venue, not necessarily NFT3, where we were all delegates together in some (seemingly) fictional conference, although many a one attempted, in character, to do such things as selling me a tie (I pointed out that I had one in my pocket, and that a T-shirt has no collar anyway) or asking me how I felt about the event.

To camera, when invited to say something inspirational, I came up with ‘Brick is beautiful’. It turns out that it would – if anyone had much been paying attention – have been seen on the screen of NFT3. Generating nonsense to order, as this blog as a whole is likely to evidence, doesn’t entail much…


In a way, I wish that I had bantered more with the Streetwise crew, rather than taking my seat, but, once in my seat, it seemed churlish to make the row rise again (to let me out) and, yet again, for my re-entry – the other end of my row was blocked off by the mixing-desk. (It seemed that no one else decided to join in with the ‘official’ delegates at the front, with their suits, briefcases, ability to sing.)

As a homage to Marcel (although spelt differently), I had chosen a name-badge with the identity of Pierre Duchamps, an Alternative Energy Intern. I hoped that something would hang on this, rather than it from the lanyard, so it was a disappointment that it might as well have said George Osborne, Financial Meddler. (No big deal, but there could have been a draw from those badges known to have been issued, and a game of forfeits...)

Ignoring the name, when one of the cast introduced himself by way of an extended arm from two rows forward, I claimed to be Peter Henderson-Smyth-Henderson-Smyth-Henderson, and he concluded that I sounded ‘quite posh’.

I hoped also that, in the style of I Fagiolini’s The Full Monteverdi my neighbour would turn out to be ‘a mole’. When I heard / saw that show (in Cambridge), one knew that, over a modest meal, one had one or more singers at one’s table, but not who he, she or they were :

A woman challenged me as one, and – fool that I am – I didn’t play my denial for all that it was worth. (Although, of course, it was self evident that a denial couldn’t mean anything, so I wasn’t believed anyway, since, as everyone will testify, I do look like a professional singer.)


No matter, as it merely meant that I could, more or less, relax in my seat without the obvious need for further participation. However, I did fail to reckon on the company song, and, at the best of times (silliness doesn’t help), I cannot co-ordinate words and any actions, not least when those words (and their music) were unknown to me minutes before !

Early during the run-through of this act of corporate worship, I gave up, and, standing inert, took much more satisfaction in seeing the cast sing and mime the whole song en masse (which, in the style of The Twelve Days of Christmas, repeated each one of the Ten Rules of Good Business), much more than coaxing my resistant abilities further could have achieved. (I have no doubt that few have my problems, and most would have taken pleasure in what, for me, was an exercise doomed to fail.)

I can confidently (wonder whether I should) state that @streetwiseopera's #ATEOpera had a good take on company manners, @catherinebray...
— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) April 27, 2013

That’s my hesitation out of the way, a strange (but usual) mix of wanting to be in a role-play, but on my terms. So, on to what this combination of filmed and live experience seemed to say. In doing so, I am influenced, after the event, by having read the programme**, which, I found, pulled together one’s appreciation of the overall narrative intent. (Such, of course, is the way – and world – of opera, whereas I am happy and used to making my own way in that of film).


Not to try to summarize what happened, save that the film interspersed with the live singing and action, the arias from Christopher Lowrey (counter-tenor) and Elizabeth Watts (soprano), interacting on screen with members of Streetwise from all over the country, were exquisite. Indeed, as I Tweeted :

I can confidently (wonder whether I should) state that @streetwiseopera's #ATEOpera had a good take on company manners, @catherinebray...

— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) April 27, 2013

Can't stop humming (in public, and singing elsewhere) Lascia ch'io pianga after @lizwattssoprano and @streetwiseopera plus Sacconi Quartet !

— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) April 28, 2013

The filmic aspect was in no way subservient to the role and action of these clips, but portrayed the alienation, isolation and heartfelt humanity at work in a response to the clinicality of company lore, which dictates shaking hands with the client not because one feels that one wants to, but as part of good business.

I have seen the Watts aria several times over (as my attempt to support Streetwise and download from the iTunes platform failed, after posing insurmountable problems), and it stands that repeated watching, because it is composed entirely in the idiom of cinema. I imagine the same to be true of the aria sung by Lowrey, of which my impression was that the wholly musical performance of the Vivaldi was respected in the service of the message that rapacity to invest threatens to overcome what matters, and what we should really value in this life.

I can confidently (wonder whether I should) state that @streetwiseopera's #ATEOpera had a good take on company manners, @catherinebray...
— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) April 27, 2013

Informed by the programme, I apprehend the arch that these and the other filmed sections sought to erect, but I do confess that I was lost in following how the scene from Peter Grimes, which, I now gather, led into a Streetwise commission from Orlando Gough, brought about the degeneration of the dream of Locateco Solutions : throughout, this cinematic work, the execution was brilliant, and the closing scene of rejection, liberation, and immersion in the natural world was evocative and poignant.

It was merely that the step that took us to where the façade began to crumble was not clear. Arguably, though, for those who felt the movement for the Berlin wall to collapse, or for what is shown in the powerful documentary The Miracle of Leipzig (2009) (Wir Sind das Volk) not to happen, the feelings were stronger than an exact notion of why what was tipping had become unstable.


So the filmed episodes I do not seek to fault : David Pisaro (tenor) singing Grimes in the church setting was marvellous, as was how the scene – with Britten’s skilful writing – built to his expulsion, but – rightly or wrongly – I felt that I did understand, at the time, why everything was unravelling. The programme addressed that, and this is – if a concern at all – a minor one, since I had had the time to read ahead, but chose not to.

The Streetwise singers in NFT3, interacting with the projection, gave an overall feeling that conveyed how important the voice, music, the human spirit is. All in all, a stunning experience, and a tribute to all in any way involved with it !



Post-script

After this Tweet (and following the link) :

StreetwiseOpera ‏@StreetwiseOpera 21m
Lovely review of #ATEOpera in @spectator http://www.spectator.co.uk/arts/opera/8900001/the-point-of-life/


I commented this:

Everything that this reviewer writes about @StreetwiseOpera's The Answer to Everything is spot on : it was timely, its parody of the corporate world (and its tics) was telling and amusing, and the music was of a very high quality, not least that passage from Grimes.

And if any Minister for Culture couldn't understand or relate to it, maybe that person's in the wrong job... !


I have now followed a link to a review in The Guardian, as Tweeted by @StreetwiseOpera... The reviewer found the event dramatically 'confusing', which mirrors what I attribute (above) to not having read the synopsis.



End-notes

* I tried to explain that I was there on the strength of knowing that Elizabeth Watts (@LizWattsSoprano) was involved, whose single with Streetwise I knew (from Splatter) had just been released.

My neighour thought that I said ‘Watson’, and, her not knowing EW, it didn’t seem to help that I said that she is a soprano. I ended up mumbling something about she was probably one of many, as I was, sadly, suddenly not sure, in the guise of being a delegate, how sopranos could fit in a corporate structure…


** It had two front covers (a style of presentation that I gather to be called tête-bêche).


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Gala with a glitch

This is a Gala review of Underground (1928), screened in NFT1 at the BFI

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2012
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10 January

This is a Gala review of Underground (1928), screened in NFT1 at the BFI

Confession : I am not very practised (or confident) with how to view silent film :

* self-perpetuating lack of exposure to the field

* which means that my lip-reading* never gets better

* and disinclines me to make the effort to choose silent


For I find the concentration needed even greater than for a poorly subtitled film, where there is the anxious race to read and make sense of captions before the next ones come up (and, necessarily, the one in hand disappears).

None of this deterred me from this gala screening:

Catch Anthony Asquith’s beautifully restored Underground, a tale of love, jealousy and murder: bit.ly/WqdTmi
— BFI (@BFI) January 11, 2013

It had all the elements : a Q&A (and hosted by Francine Stock, to boot); the buzz of a first night at the BFI; in Underground, the restoration, by the BFI, of a film 85 years old; the involvement of silent-film musical interpreter Neil Brand, not as accompanying musician this time, but as composer of the score; and the tie-in with the 150th anniversary of the tube, with a film that almost made a character of its tunnels, staff, trains.

It brought out all sorts, from the train enthusiasts (there was one on the panel, with a looping presentation of stills) to, as it were, the silent crowd, and, of course, film buffs in general (into the latter two categories of which Brand and Stock** fitted, as did Bryony Dixon (curator at the BFI) and ?? Ben Thompson ?? (from the team of restorers)).

However, there were only two drawbacks, the minor one that, with a panel of four, each of whom had to be given a say, there was only time for five (it may have been four) audience questions, and the major hitch, which had Brand leaping from his seat and disappearing within minutes, which was that the soundtrack was no longer in synch with the projection (which, apparently, it had been earlier).

So, for example, an urchin playing on some sort of whistle was heard before he was seen. As Brand had, of course, carefully scored each moment of the 84 minutes, it was immensely distressing for him (hence his sudden exit to voice his concern), but it seemed from the apology at the end from the BFI’s director that there had been a lack of confidence that stopping the film would have allowed the problem to be remedied***.

I asked for a complementary ticket to allow me to see it as it should have been, because, although there was no doubt of the power and skill of the scoring (and of the BBC Symphony Orchestra’s performance****), the concentration involved in hearing a soundtrack that did not match the visuals compounded my interpretative impairment.
That apart, it was a grand evening, and I was pleased to be able to talk briefly to Neil Brand again and offer my congratulations (and commiserations). This is why :

@bfi Othello's plot always strikes me as flimsy - #Underground has the power of an Iago figure heightened by realist obsession / great music
— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) January 11, 2013

I had heard Brand talking to Sean Rafferty last year, on Radio 3’s late-afternoon programme In Tune (one could equally say early-evening, as I choose not to say ‘drive-time’), and was very interested both in what he had to say about the film’s dynamics, and to hear not only some of the music, but also how it had been composed. So I knew that Anthony Asquith, son of the prime minister of that name, had been the art director, I knew a skeletal amount about what the film dealt with, and I had heard Brand’s palpable enthusiasm for this commission.

I knew, therefore, that I wanted to see it, and, when I saw Brand at the Silent Film Festival (I only managed to see one film, though, where he had been playing with Mark Kermode’s band The Dodge Brothers) and then at Festival Central, I learnt that all the attention was focused on a likely release timed with the tube anniversary.

This film – including in its original sense - is terrific, and there is no doubt that the patient work of restoration, of composing the score, and of recording and tracking it has been an excellent use of resources. I want only to say enough about it that is consistent with leaving it to unfold to a new viewer, but showing what there is to be appreciated.

My Tweet will have alerted to the scheming and self-centredness of Othello, but (in no particular order) there is also, as Bryony Dixon put it, a love quadrilateral, a fight and other moments of tension, shots of trains and escalators in and around Waterloo tube-station, a magnificent chase, and a picture of the metropolis and a romantic trip to (as a member of the audience asserted, since no one knew) Hampstead Heath. What more could one want... ?


End-notes

* It is a useful adjunct to indistinct speech, as a clue (or cue) to what is being uttered, but a different proposition, I find, with no speech sounds. A film of this kind has few inter-titles (have they always been called that?), and for me, used as I am to the dialogue driving many a scene, there’s a frustration at not knowing what is said.

** Aurally, it has the ring of a partnership, warehousing, maybe, designer goods.

*** When I talked, at a later date, to Cambridge Film Festival director Tony Jones, he was confident both as to the nature of the problem, and how the technology caused would have made it not capable of easy remedy : he also seemed to know, but lost me in the detail of the technicality, how it should have been done, and so would not have been beyond repair on the spot.

**** Brand provided information about how the recording from a live performance at a screening last year, once the audience noise had been taken off, had to be intermixed with taping from that event’s rehearsal. Here, too, there had been a technical issue, because the frame-speed of the projection when the two had been recorded differed !


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Fabette's Beast

This is a review of Babette’s Feast (1987)

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2012
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

4 January

This is a review of Babette’s Feast (1987)

* Contains spoilers *

Babette's Feast, newly released by the BFI (British Film Institute), is not exactly a suspenseful film, but there are tensions, and they have kept me pondering it, and so not writing this review, for several weeks. (Which is very often a sign of a good film, i.e. that it should defy instant analysis.)

When one does not have an original screenplay, but an adaptation, one never quite knows not just what has been changed*, but also how things made manifest in the written work (which may be so ambiguously, provisionally or tangentially) have been embodied on the screen. In some ways, cinema can be more indefinite than a novel, in others it almost cannot fail to state things.

One is the location. Quite apart from what the narration tells us, we can see that it is a small community in a remote spot, and we might subconsciously, even before shown anyone who lives there or, less still, having mention of a sect, infer qualities in those who (choose to ?) live there - and not be so far wrong ?

As to the buildings that, real or specially constructed, we see, no amount of lulling the senses can conceal the fact that they are smaller on the outside – this, though, is not Doctor Who**, and the scenes with which we are presented could often not be accommodated by these modest dwellings, even allowing for the cinematographer being the other side of where a wall should be.

There may be several reasons for having the exterior shot in a way that draws attention to proximity, intimacy and even claustrophobia, but I shall choose the fact that the isolation and vulnerability to external forces are heightened by the smaller scale, giving a sense both of how precarious life there is and that it may be prone to further influences for change. At any rate, that is how I interpret it.

This is Jutland, in Denmark, in – in the present, as shown – the early latter half of the nineteenth century, but what I need to find out is how the various wars between the Scandinavian countries had affected the population geography (I refuse to say ‘demographics’), and whose territory this island had been at various times. I say this because the spirit of August Strindberg hovers over this film for me, and I want to understand things a little better. That inquiry must wait for another time…

Strindberg is first very evident when Babette goes away to make arrangements for the feast, and the sisters have to take over duties that they last performed before she came, in the caricatured responses of those on the receiving end of their charity to the food presented and the fact that it is late, but the whole notion of this sort of meals-on-wheels generosity chimes with later works, too, such as his A Dream Play from 1902. (Does one, though, attribute that feeling to Babette’s Feast because of Karen Blixen or because of the screenwriter?)

Where the feeling is most relevant is at the feast itself, with the sharply defined moments of what neighbour says (or whispers) to neighbour, which is a sort of kaleidoscopic one for me, because I did not feel myself tasked with keeping track of who had a specific grudge with whom until shown them again, but of having an impression of the levels of unrest or discontent – the Strindbergian element is in people saying to each other what, dreams apart, they ordinarily would not reveal, and goes all the way back to a puzzling little play such as Easter.

They most discomfort the two worrying sisters (and they, too, I found it hard to distinguish from each other, though not for want of concentration*), who appear to see any ignoble behaviour or sentiment as ultimately a bad reflection on their father, without seeming to appreciate that maybe, even if he was not a charlatan who just wanted power and authority, he knew these people’s nature better than they do.

That is one of the tensions, but, preceding it, has been the sisters’ regret of allowing Babette to prepare this meal, which they have come to see as beastly and probably satanic, after encountering the live ingredients: in a paranoid response – and the elderly sisters are highly skittish – they come to suspect that the act of kindness is for their ill, and tell all the guests so, who are ready to believe it.

As I see it, the general unrest could, depending on our disposition and mood, affect us differently – we could reject it as their baseless superstition, or think that there might be, in the unfolding of this feast (the English word is laden with significance from Belshazzar to The Last Supper to the feast that is Christmas) be something sinister. As to the latter response, for example, why is the instruction for General Löwenhielm’s glass to be kept topped up, and is he meant blessing by it, or some harm of over-indulgence ? In those terms, indeed, what does this elaborate food and drink for these simple-living people mean ?

That question we come to later, but the night itself embodies dissension and enmity, which almost seem brought on by the feast and clearly disquiet the passive and peaceful daughters of the pastor : to what, one imagines them thinking, has all his work come, if the reaction to this meal in his honour takes the form of the uncovering of deep grudges and hatreds ? Is that the truth, or is there some more magical act of redemption going on, which means that, when the guests (other than Löwenhielm and his aunt, who have already left for home) dance around the well-head and sing, they are truly and fully reconciled to each other, rather than this being a papering-over the cracks ?

At any rate, the naive pair, with no idea how much such elaborate food and expensive wine would cost, have been blessed by Babette (along with the villagers), and had not figured that she could possibly have spent her whole winnings on it all. They had been mean enough to wonder how they would manage without her, if she went back to France – and, indeed, we are shown them struggling, and with the grumpy reactions of those to whom they give charity.

The fact that she did not have anywhere to go to in France does not explain the staggering decision not to buy herself an easier life somewhere else, and that generosity is so baffling that it almost only works on the level of parable, very much in what we are told of Griselde in Chaucer’s The Clerk’s Tale. It remains a puzzle to me, even on some reading (as I have heard critics advance) that wants to see the feast itself as the healing sacrament that these people needed : if there is a synthesis between the pious, remote North and the South of the warmer Parisian lands, then this is really no more than Löwenhielm says, who maintains a commentary on food and drink, both at the level of identification, and at that of gourmandizing wit and wisdom.

It is his presence at table, he who is used to this quality of food from when Babette worked elsewhere, that strikes an alternative note, and, whilst he might guide the others into enjoying the food, he seems as if in a dream, not being amazed at how such things could be in a poor and remote place. He leaves without seeing Babette, and, outside her kitchen, she takes no part in the feast, since she directs the others what to serve and how. It has all led up to the sisters learning that she is not to leave them, with and because of this meal, and there the graciousness of the gesture remains, for me, at the level of allegory.


End-notes

* For example, I know that Tove Jansson was Finnish, but she came from the Swedish-speaking part of Finland, and had Swedish as her primary language. However, this map delineating the extent, at various times, of the Swedish empire shows that, although it encompassed parts of Norway and Finland, and even Bremen and Riga, it did not touch Denmark, for some reason.

However, as flicking through one of these books of the type 385 Films You Must See Before Breakfast revealed, I now know that the story has been translated to Denmark from Norway anyway.

** TARDIS – to come…

*** I could not swear that the daughter whom her father delights in having subject to the philandering of the French musician Papin, just so that he can impiously delight that he has been snubbed, is not the same one whom Löwenhielm seeks to court, even if parity would have one disappointed suitor for each.


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Balancing Hitchcock

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2012
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

28 October

* Contains spoilers *

I will always make time to try to see a Hitchcock - as, broadly, with any film - in the cinema.

Often enough, it is a restoration, and the BFI has done a fair bit of that recently with his early films. There may be one screening (or a limited number), but one can usually hope to make it.

However, when the strand at this year's Cambridge Film Festival put on twelve films in the only eleven days that it ran*, there were inevitably going to have to be compromises, if trying to do all of them did not become an aim in itself, dictating that one could not see nearly as much of others' work. I therefore chose to limit myself to three (although, if domestic arrangements had permitted, I would happily have made an excuse to reacquaint myself with North by Northwest (1959)).

Vertigo (1958), I have already found time to talk about separately here, which leaves Blackmail (1929) and Marnie (1964), very different times, as we needed to be treated to piano accompaniment to the former. (Sadly, the festival web-site does not credit the pianist for his superb work, but I am able to name John Sweeney, because I have spotted his name in the programme (where I least expected it).)

I think that there may be similarities and preoccupations that I can identify, and, straightaway, is the fact that Hitchock is drawn to making the woman the criminal wrongdoer in all three films (whatever others may have done, it is her guilt and whether she can escape from it that is our point of attention): is Hitchcock giving us, deep down, what we want, or what he really wants (they may be the same thing)?

The contrast is with the Cary Grant figure, not just in NBNW, who is often enough a spy or a policeman (although, in the named film, he has to choose his allegiance, once he has worked out what is going on). I am just guessing, when I should really find out, that Hitchcock may have become influenced by, and even have experienced, the world of psychoanalysis that was so prevalent. Whether or not be believed in it, a film such as Marnie typifies the embodiment in Hollywood cinema of Freudian or sub-Freudian thinking and beliefs, for we are shown a young woman both shaped by her past and with recollections, which she cannot understand for herself, of what that past really means.

The scenes where Marnie ('Tippi' Hedren) relates to her mother (Diane Baker) - or, rather, doesn't relate to her mother, except on the most basic, human level - are almost too painful to watch: there is a torn, broken relationship, although the ties are there. The unfolding of the film tells us what really happened, why Marnie experiences what she does, and the forgetting that is usual in these films is here exposed by Sean Connery's dogged detrmination (as Mark Ruland) to find out the truth, because of the woman whom he loves. Revelation, redemption, renewal is almost the pattern.

In her book In Glorious Technicolor, Francine Stock considers, whether or not it was any more than cinematic convention, this prevalent presentation of one startling breakthrough in recollection or insight that will change everything (itself a sort of version of the American dream of anyone 'making it', and going from rags to riches, by suggesting that the transformation could be so strightforward and simple), which dominated this type of psychiatric or psychological film for a long time: the pattern, as she expounds it, is clearly there in Spellbound (1945), with, there, a male suspected of murder (Gregory Peck) and Ingrid Bergman as the psychiatrist who achieves the breakthrough.

Unlike the women in Blackmail, Vertigo, and Marnie, Peck's character is accused of wrongdoing, but is not ultimately guilty of it. Turning to the first of those, Anny Ondra (as Alice White) has left clues of what she did in self-defence, and they dog her for much of the film. When seemingly free of them, what Hitchcock clevely does is pull the rug from under us that there had been a common understanding, with her policeman boyfriend (John Longden), as to what was being covered up. It is too late, but what, maybe we wonder, will become of them, and what did he think that he was hushing up?


End-notes

* Not to be critical, but this was more of a season than a strand, and I do wonder whether there might be scope for bringing some of them back together so that those who, like I, wanted to see films that may never appear can see some new ones, some maybe not so new.


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