Showing posts with label Peter O'Toole. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Peter O'Toole. Show all posts

Tuesday 16 September 2014

Thomas with a twist – too much of a twist ?

This is a Festival review of Under Milk Wood (1971) plus director Q&A

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2014 (28 August to 7 September)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)


16 September

This is a Festival review of Under Milk Wood (1971) plus director Q&A

Under Milk Wood (1971*) twice screened as part of Cambridge Film Festival’s / #CamFF 2014’s Dylan Thomas 100 strand : this is an account of the screening in Screen 1 at 6.30 p.m. on Monday 1 September 2014, followed by a Q&A with its director and screenwriter, Andrew Sinclair

Wikipedia® reports that the famous Richard Burton radio production, broadcast on The Third Programme on the BBC on 25 January 1954, was incomplete, because ‘two sections’ (unspecified) had been omitted – Douglas Cleverdon, its producer, revisited the play in 1963, and it was broadcast in its entirety on 11 October.




Apparently, Andrew Sinclair’s film (his screenplay and direction) came nearly twenty years after both an incidentally recorded reading – the only one with Dylan Thomas (as First Voice (and Eli Jenkins)) – on 14 May 1953, and Thomas’ death (on 9 November 1953) :



The strangeness is partly there from Richard Burton and Ryan Davies (as, respectively, First and Second Man), not least what they get up to in a shed that they go into : one does not doubt that Jack Toye (@jackabuss) is right that Thomas lost his virginity thus – but these are men not normally of an age to be having their first sexual experience ? (Unless, of course, we look beyond their age, and imagine their occasional high jinks to be re-living their youth ?)

In any case, even though it happened – with Thomas ‘sharing his partner’ (as one might have called it in the 1950s) with the other man – of what great relevance was this element of biography to the text of Under Milk Wood ? Except, of course, that Thomas gives us his fictional Llareggub awash with sex, sexual fantasy and desire (no doubt why there were two cuts in 1954 ?)…

Yet somehow, that seems an insufficient reason to introduce this particular ‘stage-business’ for First and Second Man (though, clearly, they have to be doing something**) – quite apart from what it suggests about whoever the woman is (not easily identifiable from IMDb’s cast-credits), and the role and self-determination of women, that Burton and Davies can just oblige her to divert her from her path, and down to the cliffs, in the first place. For there seems to be enough actual or latent passion as it is, without interpolating more, because, needless maybe to say, sometimes more is less.

Somehow, also, one is thrown back to infidelity and attraction in The Edge of Love (2008), which – whatever its merits or rootedness in fact – shows an ease of relations, and what, at worst, they can give rise to : jealousy, anger, and violence. Yet we also have what is in the centre here, that ‘ease’ repeatedly giving way to multiple relationships, whether the ‘marriage beyond death’ of Mrs Ogmore-Pritchard (Siân Phillips) or the various desires, lusts and even adultery of the others.

In Thomas’ text, we have the extremes of this film that featured him (please see above), with Vivien Merchant (Mrs Pugh) humiliating / emasculating her husband (Talfryn Thomas), but risking his revenge, and the disgust and disdain with and in which Polly Garter (Ann Beach) is held for her promiscuity (and, just as relevantly, her fecundity) : with Polly, one feels that Thomas’ heart lies, as it seems to do (in other ways and amongst others), and with the youthful attractiveness of Gossamer Beynon** (Angharad Rees) – see the comment on The Wicker Man (1973), below.

Likewise, the seemingly well-suited couple (amongst so many mismatches) of Cherry Owen (Glynn Edwards) and Mrs Cherry Owen (Bridget Turner), and even Captain Cat’s (Peter O’Toole’s) solitary, but content, world amongst the sounds from which he conjures up pictures of life – as Thomas, his creator, himself does, whether boomingly delivering ‘Fern Hill’, or here, in this play.


However, the question is – as famously with the play within Willy Russell’s original play of Educating Rita (1983) – simply put : Since this is a Play for Voices, why do we need what Sinclair has done with it, converting it into a film ? And, moreover, do we need him effectively undermining his own screening by being too candid about (not to list everything) :

* Telling us at which times of day – on account of sobriety – he could rely on Richard Burton to do various things on the shoot :

We also heard some of this from Roland Klick at the Festival in 2013, regarding Dennis Hopper, cocaine, and the making of White Star (1983), but Klick seemed to inform Hopper’s performance by what he told us, because how he told it was more germane…)

* Likewise with Elizabeth Taylor (and Sinclair’s having to have her as part – as it were – of the package, so letting her be as Rosie Probert), but bitching about her Cleopatra make-up, her behaviour on set, etc.

* Cast who came to Sinclair as part of the funding deal, when maybe it gives a better impression of artistic unity and purpose at least to be silent about such matters (unless asked), rather than glaringly seeking to be truthful that it had to be accepted, whatever the drawbacks

* Even, perhaps, drawing attention to the fact that Burton does not speak a word on screen (and it was recorded separately) – what maintains the magic of cinema better… ?


Yet, on some sort of fantasy level, Sinclair talks up Thomas’ work – which, as a champion of it when he was a fellow in Cambridge, he necessarily would – and also how easily the text (which has been analysed here by another) fitted with the talented actors (i.e. those who were not just, not in his words, ‘along for the ride’) : afterwards, Sinclair told The Agent (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) that the tempo to which, in the extended passages, the actors naturally inclined had never been at variance with his own vision for the delivery.

Maybe so, but we wonder how easily Sinclair persuaded women to wear costumes so diaphanous as to be transparent, or Rees to recede with a naked back – in a sequence that took us out of the already concentratedly odd (as if the Welshness that Thomas wants to share with the world is distilled eccentricity ?) into unreality : and maybe Sinclair’s film was influential on the significantly more interesting vision of Anthony Shaffer in his screenplay for The Wicker Man (1973), with Gossamer a precursor to the likes of Britt Ekland (as Willow) on a less furtive coastline ? Also a film where director Robert Hardy gives much more sense of being on a coast and of the sea (even if Under Milk Wood was filmed in and around Fishguard, Pembrokeshire) ?


Sinclair’s film starts and finishes with the sky at night-time, seen through branches as the camera moves onwards. Later, whether through the lack of budgetary or other resources, the night that Burton and Davies describe does not always resemble that pitch quality (again, Sinclair was not asked why it looks less like coal black than dawn – or brighter – before we even get to dawn).

Further on, it does not seem to be the real O’Toole looking out to the waves (if Captain Cat could see) from his vessel atop a building, but rather resembles a mannequin, and the film (even if it appears to match the length of the play) feels substantially over its length for its content – however much Sinclair has invented for his cast to do...


Which is maybe the problem, namely that this depiction is overly visual, often literal (despite the moments of unreality), an approach that draws attention to the fact that what one most wants to take from Under Milk Wood is Thomas’ words.


So what was the point of that Drama on 3 ? To get Dylan Thomas' screenplay made, @BBCRadio3blog - or to make it seem unnecessary ?
— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) October 26, 2014




Yet it is, after all, quite nice to learn this (also from Wikipedia®) :

In December 2012 the director of the film, Andrew Sinclair, gave its rights to the people of Wales.

If so, maybe the nicest thought about the film was not mentioned in the Q&A…


End-notes

* Yet IMDb says 1972 (and, crucially, it says 87 mins, #CamFF 88 mins) – and never to be confused with Under Milk Wood (2014)…

** If, that is, they need to be embodied at all, and not just voiced over – a topic that did not appear to be canvassed in the initial part of the Q&A.




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

Saturday 10 May 2014

From the #UCFF archive : The Lottery Ticket (submitted to @BBCRadio3 as a competition entry)

The Lottery Ticket :

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2014
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)


11 May

The Lottery Ticket :
Six Numbers


[In homage to Stravinky’s Jeu de Cartes
(and, necessarily, Walter Mitty)
]

To Svetlana



Alex frowned.

He had become captivated (again) by the writings of Jorge Luis Borges, and now he just didn’t know how to go on… In particular, he found the story ‘The Lottery in Babylon’ perplexing, and his equilibrium upset. (This was, of course, before technology would render his musings virtually redundant, but at the impossibly high cost of re-creating another Borgesian fantasy, that of a library without end or catalogue, or even meaning.)

Despite the clear reference to another of this century’s great writers in the name of ‘the sacred latrine’, which – maybe? – threatened to undermine the whole edifice as artifice, was there ironic plausibility in the claim that ‘A slave stole a crimson ticket; the drawing determined that that ticket entitled the bearer to have his tongue burned out’? After all, hadn’t he heard that the same writer, in his A Universal History of Infamy, had plundered – or rather dismembered – the Encyclopaedia Britannica in search of tales of ‘Widow Ching, Lady Pirate’ and of ‘The Tichborne Claimant’?

That being so, why shouldn’t there be a grain of truth in a lottery in an ancient land decreeing ‘that a sapphire from Taprobana be thrown into the waters of the Euphrates’, or giving rise to a world where it could be said that ‘Like all the men of Babylon, I have been proconsul; like all, I have been a slave’?

He cursed Borges under his breath at the notion that, in the simple frustration that he just couldn’t know the answer, there lay the beauty of the text, and, in search of sleep, turned over once more.
13

* * * * *


Christy woke him – too early! – the following morning, with a shake. ‘Wassamatter?’, he raged incoherently. ‘Your mother is here’, came the stark answer that brought him unerringly into the wakefulness that he sought to avoid. Christy had a knack for doing that, and for being to hand as the (logically necessary) messenger-boy in the first place.

Alex threw on some clothes, and descended into the farmhouse kitchen. There, indeed, she was, brandishing a pale pink oblong of paper. ‘Now I’ll be rid of the lot of you!’, she shrieked; ‘And you all told me, over and over till I nearly was, that I was out of my mind!’. He had no idea what she was talking about, but there was no chance to find out, because she had metamorphosed into Science Officer Spock, complete with tricorder, blue top, and those ever so slightly kinky boots, and started flying around the room.

He jerked himself awake, regretting that the act of emergence meant that, the revels being, though thankfully, ended, he would have to face the day.

And who the hell was Christy?, he railed to himself. (Or was that, as he surmised as soon as he’d said it, an unbidden consequence of listening to Beckettt’s All That Fall…?)
8

* * * * *


Across the heath, he spotted a shape on the horizon. Not having the patience for it to materialize in a long shot, like Peter O’Toole on horseback, he busied himself with some papers: if, whether or not bearing scythe, it was for him, it would be there soon enough. But where were his notes from the other evening?!

When the knock came at the door, he descended. He half-expected Maria Andreevna – although she was no horsewoman – and accordingly started puzzling at why that term conjured up a satyr-type hybrid for him, whereas the word ‘horseman’ didn’t.

In fact, it was Dr Wassimiter, ever darkly cloaked against the wind. As usual, in the six or more hours that he was with Alex, he drank tea, kvaas and vodka to excess, and consumed copious pickled beetroot and herring, but, most importantly, he had brought the love-note that was so long awaited.

Alex waved him on his way, and fell to opening it.
19

* * * * *


Her carriage came crisply for him at ten, glistening with frost. At first, he was disappointed at the thought that it had been sent to him empty after all, but the pallor of her unveiled face gave her away, when she tried to sneak a further look.

Ably helped, amidst a cloud of powder, he climbed the steps that the footmen let down for him, but, losing his balance at the summit, almost fell into the furs on top of her! Scarcely a fit way to greet your queen when she condescends to call you to have your future read – a horoscope likely cast whilst the Englishman improvised a fantasia or two, and that other saucy fellow embellished further the record of his sexual conquests!
7

* * * * *


All at once, she was Leni to his Josef K., betraying the advocate with her passion, toppling and crushing the piles of paperwork over and over under her willing back.

Or Frieda, bringing the odour of the slops and swill into Klamm’s private rooms at the Herrenhof, into which K. and she had penetrated to avoid the tiresome attention of the assistants – and now found themselves alone, as never before since his arrival in the village, with the luxury to enjoy (rather than snatch at) sex.

He came close behind her, nuzzling the side of her neck and covering it with kisses, as he crossed his hands under and embraced her breasts.

Yes, to-night was the night!
29


* * * * *


As he drove her home the next morning, she caught him unawares, just after he had taken the gentle S-bend by the church.

‘What are you looking like that for, like you’ve won the lottery?’, she said, slyly.

46


31 January

Copyright ® Belston Night Works 2010




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

Saturday 11 August 2012

Where it all started with Woody and film

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


12 August

As an enthusiast, I cannot help watching What's New, Pussycat? (1965), and wonder what it would have been, if Woody Allen's script from the swinging sixties had been kept intact.

There are traces of what seems his humour in exchanges such as when Victor, played by Allen, is told I can't make love with a person in the closet!, and he retorts to ask how many people, then, does she need in it? If it was his entire screenplay, which I'm sure that I gather that it was not, would that have had a chase with go-karts towards the end, before a muted non-sequitur finale?

As it stands, the plot takes us from A to B just about, but probably the most entertaining aspect of it is from when Ursula Andress literally drops into shot, exuding unashamed sex appeal, albeit as an implausible parachutist with what others like to call 'no back story' - what Thurber called Sex ex machina. Otherwise, that is when the film itself descends into the weakest and most stupid of farces, probably pretty unworthy of the relative sophistication of what went before.

When still in Paris, we see little but interiors, the most 'charming' being Victor's artist's garret, complete with tree-trunk staircase, but the most winning outside shots are of where Dr Fassbender (Peter Sellers) and his Wagnerian wife live, and are having an argument about his relations with patients at the outset. Sellers is terrifically funny, with his immaculate timing and delivery, not least in this scene, where Allen's writing shows.

Allen himself has limited opportunities to shine, though he does, and Romy Schneider excels in a trio with Capucine and Paula Prentiss, all after the body of Michael James (Peter O'Toole). O'Toole's comedic flair, as more of a straight man than Sellers, is also to the fore as this suitably unreal sex-magnet, and they bring this skit on sex and attraction up from two stars to three.