Friday 17 February 2017

Pass the salt, dear ! [Hissed : No - not that way, Sybil...]

Table manners - or barely disguised hostilities and aggressions ?

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2016 (20 to 27 October)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

17 February

What do we really learn at the table together : table manners - or barely disguised hostilities and aggressions ?

The schoolboy wisdom, when chastised, may have been that we owe table manners just to the court of Versailles, and so we can dispense with being 'hung up up' about them. (It is a moot point, though, who gets hung up (or which more) - those offended, or the transgressor ?).

However, their arbitrary employment can show barely disguised hostilities and aggressions between us what we might call society (or - even more bogusly - polite company'





To be continued - but it is also linked to the posting ???





Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)
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Thursday 16 February 2017

The You’re-a-Fuss Fairy Tale

The You’re-a-Fuss Fairy Tale

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2016 (20 to 27 October)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

16 February
The You’re-a-Fuss Fairy Tale

 Once upon lots of times, as no history is better at repeating itself than horrible history, it was a bit like this :

 1. Bodger Dave decided to hold a prize-competition

 2. But he let some sort of friend, BJ the Bold, draw up the competition-rules

 3. Without even bothering to read them, Dave published the rules

 4. They promised 52 prizes of £350m per year for life

 5. BJ then decided that he was less Bold – and more like Surf or Ariel

 6. So BJ sold (or gave ?) his idea for winning the competition to Truculent Theresa, The Mare of Maidenhead

 7. The Mare entered the competition fifty-two times, with the same entry

 8. Dave thought that this was odd, and nearly declared – he probably did declare, but then rescinded it – all of The Mare’s entries to be invalid

 9. Realizing that BJ or Dave ‘might do something’, The Mare pointed out noisily – in that truculent sort of way of The Press Barons, around The Trough of Self-Interest – various features of the competition-rules

 10. First, The Mare said, the rules did not prohibit multiple entries, or anyone winning multiply – even fifty-two times out of fifty-two…

 11. Second, the rules forgot to say that the judges’ decision was final

 12. Third, The Mare said, she was a better judge anyway of what was fair, Dave and BJ included, and declared herself sole arbiter

 13. And so The Mare won all of the fifty-two prizes, because that – wasn’t it ? – was what everyone wanted...

Copyright © Belston Night Works 2017


Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)
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Wednesday 15 February 2017

'Energetic and energizing' : At Lunch Two with Britten Sinfonia

This is a review of Britten Sinfonia's recital At Lunch Two on 14 February 2017

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2016 (20 to 27 October)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

14 February

This is a review of Britten Sinfonia with At Lunch Two at West Road Concert Hall, Cambridge, at 1.00 p.m. on Tuesday 14 February 2017


Programme :

 1. Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971) ~ Three Pieces for String Quartet (1914¹) [4 players]

 2. Mark-Anthony Turnage (1960-) ~ Prayer for a great man (2010) [2 players]

 3. Oliver Knussen (1952-) ~ Cantata for oboe and string trio (1977) [4 players]

 4. Maurice Ravel (1875-1937) ~ Introduction and Allegro (1905) [7 players]

 5. Turnage ~ Col (2016) [8 players]

 6. Stravinsky ~ Concertino for String Quartet (1920) [4 players]



Stravinsky I ~ Three Pieces for String Quartet (1914¹)

 1. Danse

 2. Eccentrique

 3. Cantique


(1) Vibrant tone-colour from Jacqueline Shave (1st violin) and vigorous pizzicato on cello (Caroline Dearnley) characterized the first impression of the work, with Miranda Dale (2nd violin) making lively interjections in the brief Danse. Even so, we hear that Stravinsky’s writing is of a contrasting nature, and – in the overall somewhat atrophied sounds of the opening bars of Eccentrique – is juxtaposing inertia and lyricism. Before, that is, the intense flowering of the development section, and a return to this quirky form of spikiness, and the opening material’s serving partly as punctuation, partly as an ending.

 Last, sensitively rendered by the violinists and more mournful, Cantique resembles a less-uninformed version of Beethoven as processed in Strauss’ Metamorphosen : quicker, but a mutated theme. Again, the writing relies on a contrast between passages and their affective colouring, but evoking a memory that is rooted, not in nostalgia, but in grief.



Turnage I ~ Prayer for a great man (2010)

(2) Prayer is uplifted, and positive, if stoic – it is, as with the preceding work, a fascinating blend of sounds, those of cello and of the horn – Martin Owen – with all its connotations of the martial, the inward, and the rustic. As the short piece progressed, we were aware how Caroline Dearnley’s freely-flowing cello-line worked with the latter : in the string legato, melding tones, although there was a deliberate, gentle mismatch with the horn’s timbre. A final, muted, section perhaps seemed to speak of adieu, or farewell.



Knussen ~ Cantata for oboe and string trio (1977)

 Before Oliver Knussen’s instrumental (3) Cantata, the statesman-like tone and appearance of Nicholas Daniel (later, in a post-concert workshop (with / for Jago Thornton’s prize-winning composition), maybe less so ?), who said that we could expect to hear some of the instruments in tempo, others playing ‘out of time’ : as he put it, Strict, but flexible – parenting, I suppose ?

 Nicholas Daniel also told us that he favoured – over Knussen’s own account of the work – when Knussen had shared, with Sinfonia players, that it is ‘like a series of diary-entries’, but ones that are technically connected. Compared with other works, rehearsing this one had apparently been more intense, but also more rewarding, and, although Daniel says that he is usually hesitant to say the word ‘masterpiece’, he promised (not wrongly) that Cantata was one - and jewel like…


Characterizing – or trying, and failing, to characterize – the mood or feel of such diary-entries, when Knussen is deliberately being holistic with them, would not let his work be the centre-piece that it was of this superbly wrought and planned Sinfonia recital. Here, the incalculably strong overall effect of a moving entity, comprising people and a feeling of place, of being placed into the timeless eternity of Time :

As one would know from typically thoughtful Sinfonia programming, pairing how the Stravinsky ends with Turnage’s reaction to the passing of his father-in-law naturally fits with Knussen’s conception of Cantata - with all the changeability that we are aware of with, say, Bach’s portraits of the facets of the seeking of a soul in penitence [counter-tenor Robin Blaze with BWV 170, Vergnügte Ruh, beliebte Seelenlust], or Handel’s Un’alma inamorata, HWV 173 [Mhairi Lawson, with La Serenissima (LaSerenissimaUK)].

 Or, of course, it could be Handel’s much more famous and beautiful da capo aria Lascia ch’io pianga [Almira / Il trionfo del tempo e del disinganno / Rinaldo], or Bach’s even more famous Erbarme dich, so beautiful where it comes in St Matthew Passion (BWV 244) : at such times, what is Time ?



Ravel ~ Introduction and Allegro(1905)

Maurice Ravel, though, has a radiance that is rarely outshone, and so we aptly heard next, in the familiar (4) Introduction and Allegro, his feeling for poesie and fantasie in the intensity of an imagined world : in the first harp solo, it became very clear that Ravel, in being commissioned to write this work to show off a new make of harp (pace Donald Macleod on Radio 3, that self-same day, with the evening repeat of Composer of the Week [#COTW]), is scoring in the spirit of writing for piano.

 Further on, and starting with the delicacy of the cello (Caroline Dearnley), the other players (Miranda Dale and Clare Finnimore) joined her in pizzicato to accompany Jacqueline Shave's bowed violin, before another gorgeous, rapt harp solo from Lucy Wakeford. With the ensemble embodying faerie and fruitfulness, we came to the flowering and fecundity of the Allegro section – with the very lovely phrasing of Lucy Wakeford, who was given a well-earnt accolade by her fellow Sinfonia performers.



 Turnage II (1960-) ~ Col (2016)

 A tradition in music of The British Isles that goes back well before Elgar’s variations presents portraits in music (of a sort, Façade (1918-1923) is also one). Unfortunately, this is what Mark-Anthony Turnage does in (5) Col, in a piece that starts in open terms, but becomes first ruminative, and then – with or at the return of that initial material – becomes downright maudlin.

 This is unlike the spirit of Ravel’s Tombeau de Couperin (1914-1917), Arvo Pärt in In memoriam Benjamin Britten (1977), or Stravinsky’s Epitaphium (Für das Grabmal des Prinzen Max Egon zu Fürstenberg) (1959), for flute, clarinet and piano, [or Double Canon ‘Raoul Dufy in Memoriam’ (1959)], and, rather, a requiem that is yet a birthday cake, but which serves as neither : though it is imperfect, one may be better hearing Colin Matthews the man, by watching Barrie Gavin’s Colin Matthews at 70 [seventy minutes or so of film about Colin Matthews, as screened at 2016’s Aldeburgh Festival of Arts and Music² (on which, see more, below)]…



Stravinsky II ~ Concertino for String Quartet

 NB The programme-notes (by Jo Kirkbride) credit the (6) Concertino as dating to 1952 – having wondered about this, and then checked more authoritatively than on the Internet³ [Wikipedia®], the Concertino actually dates to 1920⁴, and its arrangement for small ensemble to 1952…

 Given that L’histoire du soldat (The Soldier’s Tale) (1919) was from the year before 1920, it seems to endorse the comment above that one can hear hints of that work here. The Britten Sinfonia String Quartet plays the Concertino with aplomb : they happen, all, to be women, but the important point is that they are excellent musicians and communicators, and it is by their quality, not their gender, that one would commend their musicianship⁵.



In this work, as brought out here, the motivic elements underlie, but do not belie, its meditative qualities – the recapitulation that we heard was brimful of feeling, and tacitly contradicts a conception of Stravinsky as cool and unemotional. Just as did, one reflects, this string quartet with the Stravinsky piece(s) with which it / they opened a tribute to Louis #Andriessen at Milton Court last year (at The Barbican).


End-notes :

 ¹ Please see the note at the beginning of the section (below) for the second Stravinsky work for string quartet (and its dependent end-note⁴).

² One way in which the Festival is on a human scale is that, during the interval of a concert that had featured Matthews' work last year, one had the informality to address him on the stairs - to shake his hand, and briefly thank him.




Sadly, at some more 'protective' venues - unlike, for example, The National Centre for Early Music (NCEM / @yorkearlymusic) - one may not approach performers, even though they are just a small distance away (though not evident, stewards are there to prevent it) : those on stage have to be at a signing, or otherwise choose to come out into the foyer, for approaching them to be permitted.

³ In Roman Vlad's monograph entitled Stravinsky, pp. 79-81 (Oxford University Press, London (1978)).

⁴ With Three Pieces for String Quartet, it initially seemed that they were written in 1914, revised in 1918, but probably not published until 1922.

Roman Vlad (ibid, p. 50), after saying ‘Although very little known, these pieces are extremely significant as far as Stravinsky’s stylistic development and inner artistic motivation are concerned’, and then devoting several pages to them [in which, by analysing them, Vlad explains their importance to Stravinsky's and other composers' works], goes on to tell us (p. 54) :

Stravinsky himself was always greatly attached to [the Three Pieces], so much so that in 1917 he transcribed them for orchestra under the titles of ‘Danse’: ‘Excentrique’ : ‘Cantique’ [my emphasis] […].

⁵ On which point, initiatives such as Holly Tarquini's F-Rating (F-Rated (@F__Rating)) at Bath Film Festival (@BathFilm), or Cambridge's Reel Women (@ReelWomenUK), might take pause ? [Unless, of course, one claims that inclusion in a programme at the latter, or the former's Festival, is an absolute guarantee, per se, of outstanding quality.]

Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)
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Monday 13 February 2017

Love film, and love a real projection from 35mm : True Romance at The Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge (work in progress)

Love film, and love a real projection from 35mm : True Romance (1993) in Cambridge

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2016 (20 to 27 October)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

14 February

Love film, and love a real projection from 35mm : True Romance (1993) at The Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge [script by Tarantino, directed by Tony Scott]









See also Jack Toye (@jackabuss), at / for TAKE ONE (@TakeOneCinema) : www.takeonecff.com/2015/interview-david-boyd







Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)
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POV : or where is the camera placed - in the theatre, or art gallery ? (work in progress)

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2016 (20 to 27 October)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

14 February

 POV : or where is the camera placed - in the theatre, or art gallery ? (work in progress)

 In its day, the enterprise of BBC Television Shakespeare was not without its critics (and the whole thing would be done differently now, not with one director to each play, etc.), but it has this massive point in its favour : it does not present any sort of illusion that one is watching a stage production, or suggest that one might as well save (think that one saves ?) and go to the cinema to watch a 'live' (or 'encore') production, where a director gives you what to look at / what to think...

 What - by comparison with the Television Shakespeare - does NT Live (or other theatres / theatre companies, now drearily doing the same) actually offer for a minimum of £16 per adult ticket for one of these directed, live performances ? The BBC endeavour was included in the licence fee - and, at some later point, one could buy the plays on VHS cassette, for example Felicity Kendal (as Rosamund) in As You Like it, or Derek Jacobi as Richard II, as one recalls...


More to come...


Interesting ? :


Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)
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Seraphin Chamber Orchestra played in King's College Chapel, conducted by Joy Lisney

This reviews a concert given by Seraphin Chamber Orchestra, under Joy Lisney

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2016 (20 to 27 October)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

12 February

This is a review of an inaugural concert given by Seraphin Chamber Orchestra in the chapel of King’s College on Sunday 12 February 2017 at 8.00 p.m., in a programme of works by Haydn and Tchaikovsky, and including a world premiere by Benjamin Graves, conducted by cellist Joy Lisney


Benjamin Graves (199?) (@BenjaminHGraves) ~ Three Folk Songs for String Orchestra (2017) (World premiere)

 It is almost inevitable with modern compositions that one either runs out of sections, and has to reappraise whether what seemed like a pause delineated any more than a long rest, or the piece ends, when one is expecting more… (It was the latter, but no matter.)

 I confess that this was my experience when Joy gave Benjamin Britten’s Suite for Cello No. 3 at Kings Place (@KingsPlace), a piece that I do not know well, and which one can hear and see Joy playing then here (on YouTube) :



The start of the work had aetherial, ancient tones, with subtle pulsings in the midst, and it felt that we were looking to ‘Max’ (Peter Maxwell Davies) with the use of layering, and of radiant and discordant elements. When we heard the leader with obbligato violin, alongside tremolo effects that shimmered, this was perhaps where the second Folk Song began :

At any rate, there was ‘a rise’, as of cavorting seals (it becomes hackneyed to talk too much about keening, but there was that about it). Probably the third of the Folk Songs began with rhythmicity, and ‘banjo-style’ cellos, and one appreciated the effect of divided first and second violins, and the move in and out of the minor, but all with a regal air. However, although we appeared to come to a sonority, the piece did not quite end on it, but with other-worldly qualities and effects.

 The element of surprise… caught the audience by surprise, but the skill and care of Seraphin Chamber Orchestra (@SeraphinCO) in this composition was easily recognizable, and heralded a full hour of accomplishment and finely conveyed emotion under Joy Lisney’s (@JoyLisney’s) baton (or, in what followed, direction from the cello).




Josef Haydn (1732-1809) ~ Concerto for Cello in D Major, Op. 101, Hob. VIIIb : 2

 1. Allegro moderato

 2. Adagio

 3. Allegro

 Not that one would expect the opening Allegro moderato to be disrespectful, but this was treating ‘Papa’ Haydn with initial reverential respect, against which we could accord and register the flourishes on oboes and horns. Then, Joy signalled a boost in the orchestra’s volume, and we gained a sense of the echoic nature of Haydn’s writing.

In Joy's approach to his solo melody-line and its ornamentation, its beauty was paramount, and we could then, as the movement developed, appreciate the crispness of Christopher Xuereb on bass. From Joy, this was a gracious performance, with her facility at the service of bringing freshness to the interpretation. At times, she would wait, as the rest of the ensemble had a tutti passage, and she could no doubt have been content at the very great competence of Seraphin Chamber Orchestra, with its balanced and fully confident sound. We could next movingly see her feeling her way, and, come the cadenza (which one guesses may have been Joy’s own, thematically-oriented one), there was a real quiet in the chapel of King’s College, before the orchestra joined her for the close : there was not showiness here, but an appropriate response to the mood and style of Haydn’s work.


The Adagio had an understated opening, and we then heard the plangency of the oboes. Joy herself was exercising restraint as to being expressive at this stage, and then a moment of sweetness came forth – taking the simplicity in the melody-line at face value, with its honesty and clarity. In the cadenza, there were singing notes, and colours that allowed the ensemble to come quietly back in : this is not the Concerto in which to wring every essence of the Adagio for feeling, but one where its content and purpose are to serve the faster movements.

 Joy allowed the closing Allegro to luxuriate in the rich loveliness of the writing, with its feel of a rondo, and horn-calls. She was clearly working very well with the orchestra, whose rehearsals had been much publicized on Twitter (at @SeraphinCO), and enjoying the pleasure of this finale. Haydn briefly modulates to the minor, and Joy, either side of highly proficient runs, brought out some momentarily forceful bowing to match the atmosphere. A brief moment of hearing the oboes without the solo voice, and then the delightful and well-received conclusion of the work, full of energy and life.


Those who knew the work, and its demands, would have called Joy back more than twice in reacting to this work, but the applause was generous for what one judged the composition of the audience to be (and, likewise when the time came, the Tchaikovsky could have been acclaimed for longer, and the impressive quality of this playing in a notoriously demanding acoustic).




Pyotr Tchaikovsky (1840-1893) ~ Serenade for Strings, Op. 48 (1880)

 1. Pezzo in forma di sonatina : Andante non troppo — Allegro moderato

2. Valse : Moderato — Tempo di valse

3. Élégie : Larghetto elegiaco

4. Finale (Tema russo) : Andante — Allegro con spirito

 The opening statement was well paced, and had its necessary clarity, with Joy showing that it was not sufficient to play this music, but for it to speak and to unfold. There was some difficult cello-writing here, for example, but Seraphin Chamber Orchestra had assurance, and a good bass-line, as well as a clear string-sound : their conductor was confident, and appeared to be giving them confidence. With the reprise of the opening gestures, there was a good balance, which we were to notice further, as the Serenade continued.


The movement marked Valse seemed essentially carefree, but only mildly jaunty, and Joy made good use of ritardando for punctuation : with a work such as this, which we think that we know, but where we actually cannot place some parts of it, we need holding back, for our pleasure, in the familiar moments. Joy’s beating of time was gentle and leisurely.

 In the Élégie, she had the orchestra carefully present the initial material, and slowly using its measures for expressivity : for it is here, if anywhere in the Serenade, that Tchaikovsky is likely to feel unknown to us, and we need shape and structure most then, not for a conductor to let it drift.

 With the first violins against pizzicato strings, we began a gradual build, and then time to decelerate and to breathe. Again and again, Joy paced this movement, and brought us to a lovely hush, as of dying embers. Still aglow, the Larghetto was still being given due weight, and then gradually we came into a coda, with a pulse, and simple scales, to conclude.


The Finale (Tema russo) was in this same, quiet place, but more solemn, with Joy taking it steadily, and making us come again to this music, which was now familiar (in the way that our selective attention, or our listening that has been directed to what we know, the Élégie is relatively uncertain for us). Yes, we came into a little fizz and fireworks, but there was more to it than that, and Joy showed, again, that she had a sense of vision for this piece. After some luscious writing for her fellow cellists, we ended as we had begun, but with the theme’s statement now having greater poise and purpose…




Now reviewed here, the ensemble's second concert (as above), also in this venue


Just one thing that could possibly have different : especially last year, when concerts during Easter at King’s were held at the West end (and especially with period instruments), the work of a cold building on strings was noticeable. Just maybe, after the third movement of the Serenade for Strings, taking a chance to re-tune might have been worthwhile ?




Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)
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Monday 6 February 2017

Some Tweets about Spike Lee's Chi-Raq (2015)

Some Tweets about Spike Lee's Chi-Raq (2015), seen at Saffron Screen

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2016 (20 to 27 October)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

5 February


Some Tweets about Spike Lee's Chi-Raq (2015), seen at Saffron Screen, which - perhaps as an antidote to the cynicism of the musical or film called Chicago ? - looks to sisters in Ancient Greece, also tired of warfare, as a source of hope...



Nick Cannon (as Chi-Raq)

As we are shown by titles on the screen during the opening number, whose lyrics are otherwise displayed on a dark screen, the film is predicated on the fact that more men died violent deaths in 2015 in Chicago than US servicemen up to that point in Afghanistan and Iraq together : hence the name Chi-Raq, by which one of the gang-leaders (Nick Cannon) also calls himself (his opposite number is Cyclops (Wesley Snipes), and there is a loquacious chorus-figure, played by Samuel L. Jackson).


Above : John Cusack (Fr. Corridan), Wesley Snipes (Cyclops), La La Anthony (Hecuba) and Spike Lee
Below : Samuel L. Jackson (Dolmedes)


The sex-strike is started by Lysistrata (Teyonah Parris) – as in his Greek model, but with the encouragement of Miss Helen (Angela Bassett).


Teyonah Parris (Lysistrata), Angela Bassett (Miss Helen), and
Jennifer Hudson (Irene [= Greek for Peace])


Spike Lee additionally gives a role for the black evangelical church : the real St. Sabina’s in Chicago (all of the locations shown are in the city), fronted by John Cusack (as Father Michael Corridan), but with the support and appearance of its own Father Michael Pfleger, and its music and dance-groups.


Above : John Cusack (Fr. Michael Corridan) and Father Michael Pfleger
Below : Spike Lee, Al Sharpton (not credited ?), and Father Pfleger





John Cusack and Spike Lee


Necessarily, obstacles are in the women’s way, otherwise no drama and no action to the film, but it ends with an unexpected act of mercy, and a revelation by Nick Cannon of the extent to which – except physically – his acting has been subdued until that moment.





Spike Lee offers a message of hope, and we would do well to heed him.



Angela Bassett (as Miss Helen)




Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)
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Saturday 4 February 2017

Flashback : Louis Malle and Zazie dans le Métro [originally appeared for New Empress Magazine]

This review of Zazie dans le Métro (1960) first appeared for New Empress Magazine

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2016 (20 to 27 October)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
An edited version of this review of Zazie dans le Métro (1960) appeared as an on-line Flashback item for New Empress Magazine* [in February 2012]



Thanks to John Davies and his event at The Cinema Museum (@CinemaMuseum), I now know a bit about the directorial career of Louis Malle (including some clips), and have seen Zazie.

 As the book Malle on Malle (one in a series by Faber in which someone in the film business, in this case Philip French, has conversations with a director about the films then made) gives a synopsis, although I think that there are mistakes of detail, I shall not give my own, not least also because the film – probably like the book that it realizes – defies meaningful summary.

 Zazie was released in 1960, and so is exactly contemporary with Michael Powell’s Peeping Tom, a film so badly received that it virtually destroyed his career. Both film-makers were saying something new and true, but Malle, although also controversial and with a delight in addressing taboos, did not seem, here, to have ambushed his future film-making.

The film, like its title character (Catherine Demongeot), has enormous energy (Zazie’s wakeful activity is coupled with the capacity to sleep through Armageddon), and filming this novel may have appealed to Malle because of that very vivacity (and undaunted irreverence), as well as because it had been thought impossible: nothing better than a challenge for Malle !

 Zazie has few illusions, though she is, naturally, entranced by blue jeans and by the idea of the Métro (which is closed, because of a strike, until the very end – French says that she enjoys her ride, but I believe that she was still asleep). She starts the film by decrying, in no uncertain terms, the taxi that Uncle Gabriel (her mother’s brother, played by Philippe Noiret) has waiting for them – not just because, in true slapstick fashion, it’s full to the brink with other hopeful passengers – and tries to run off into the Métro.

She knows what she wants, and she doesn’t want to be fussed over by Gabriel or his landlord, taking in her stride her mother’s leaving her in his care so that she can go off for the duration with her lover. (Somehow, Zazie doesn’t appear to have been to Paris before, perhaps accounted for by the lover’s newness.) In search of a good time, she courts danger with impunity, treating everything as a game, and she partly has the freedom for her adventures courtesy of falsely implicating the landlord (a scene cleverly mirrored later, when the mysterious Trescallion tells the same gathered company stories about her).

The exuberance of the film, fuelled by Zazie even when asleep on the hoof (leaning on a car’s wing) and throwing bombs at Trescallion in a car-chase, no doubt mirrors that of the novel. The overall impact is crazy and, although Malle said that it went off the rails in the last third, it is almost impossible to know where that happened. The scenes up the Eiffel Tower are truly vertiginous, with access that may have been usual at that time or special to the film.

 The scenes on the streets of Paris are, if one stops to think of it, reminiscent of the Keystone Kops, but Malle reclaims that insane energy in a way that makes it seem wholly new, wholly unnerving. That feeds into the final onslaught in the restaurant, where, without explanation, it is the waiters against the diners, and no holds are barred… (but Zazie sleeps).


End-notes :

 * Now no longer with us...


Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)
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Wednesday 1 February 2017

Cracking open : Ghost in the Shell (1995) (work in progress)

Cracking open : Ghost in the Shell (1995) (work in progress)

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2016 (20 to 27 October)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

1 February

Cracking open : Ghost in the Shell (1995) (work in progress)

For those who want / need it, there is a link here to a synopsis [on IMDb (@IMDb)] : http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0113568/synopsis

 There are around three parts of Ghost in the Shell (1995) that are, in terms of setting up a scenario or telling a story, very heavy on text – which signifies more, when one is reading sub-titles, and trying to work out how long one has to read each (and, therefore, whether one can go back and re-read something that one did not immediately follow – which can cause anxiety can set in…), but is still hardly ideal, if one were trying to catch all the words / what they signify.

 Unless – which simply is not the case here – someone is genuinely being told something, and he or she needs to be told a large amount of information at one time (independently of our knowing it per se), a film in which sections seem overburdened with quickly-delivered text has not been carefully thought through (even in translation from manga, where there is all the time in the world to read, to celluloid, where the reader may, as described, feel justifiably pressured*) :

We cannot even realistically suggest that a native speaker (unfamiliar with the original text) would have been expecting the first of these passages, because they do go against the pattern of the film thitherto of short, sharp exchanges, not all of the content of which seems vital – as is the way in any film with an element of action – and which, if they need to make sense, will or can do so later. Be that as it may, because one passage references Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians, and others some concepts in Western philosophy (especially philosophy of mind), some of which are familiar from The Matrix* (1999), there are shortcuts, and these are not strongly held reservations about the film.

 As to whether Ghost titillates, and does so gratuitously, one hears [from @xa329] that the full manga text is explicitly sexual in places, which both confirms and denies the perception : the film could clearly show more (as later films apparently do), but none of this takes away from the fact that a female body is depicted naked, as if this is necessary for the ambient camouflage that is being deployed, when clearly that is not true for others (males) who are likewise camouflaged. (It could have been thought to be necessary by those, on the side of the government department (Section 9) with which we are interested, but that is a feeble excuse, not even used, to show Motoko naked, which is what the film-makers wish to do – and have faux-nakedness, since this is animé, not actual flesh, but as if showing such an image cannot be for sexual gratification : no one watching this film will believe that Motoko needed to be shown in that way, or that watching the motions of her breasts, nipples, etc., as they pass through the air or water are unintended to stimulate.

 Strip away these doubts about the film, and how and why it has been made in this way, and there is still plenty to say – in a way that one doubts that one can say for Jane Fonda’s choice of appearing in Barbarella (1968). The important questions are, almost necessarily, about #AI (since Motoko is not human), and partly about the body that she ends up in, and surveys the city with and from, after declining the offer to stay in Batou’s hide-away : she is grateful to him for being preserved, but does not wish to be secreted away by someone who also has fantasized about her sexually : even that is not much of a position taken from principle, but just of not wanting to be the closet creature of anyone, i.e. the idea of free-spiritedness that has pervaded her role.

 Here, as The Wachowskis did, we will find the rogue piece of code that is Neo (as well as the nature of his activities outside his legitimately paid hours of work), the sentinels, and concepts of seeking physical destruction of something that inherently is not physical, and thus also of being able to merge completely with it, and what that might mean. In Matrix Revolutions (2003), particularly (but also in the whole Matrix trilogy – and it is a complete and necessary trilogy (albeit supplemented by The Animatrix (2003), for those who will have some of the detail alluded to fleshed out…) – that merging is often passing through, and experiencing another’s lack of substance, and here, in Ghost, there is much talk of ‘barriers’ and ‘diving into’ another being, and other key-words that delineate what separates, but could yet allow ingress…
To be continued / polished / edited



 End-notes :

 * One is told, and can see, that The Wachowskis were influenced by Ghost (as considered below).

 ** One is less impressed by an argument that suggests that dumping information on us is mimetic of what M., and her fellow agents, experience as they try to process an understanding of the cyber-enemy that they face (and whether some of them are more artifice, or have been constructed as artefact, such as The Puppet-Master)…






When someone appears to suggest that such image / still is from the film's live-action re-make... :






 Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)
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Monday 30 January 2017

Whatever you mean by calling something ‘sexism’, take a look at Spellbound (1945)

Whatever you mean by ‘sexism’, take a look at what Spellbound (1945) shows us...

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2016 (20 to 27 October)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

29 January (last updated, 20 February)

Whatever you mean by calling something ‘sexism’,
take time to look at what Spellbound (1945) shows us
[watched last year at The Arts, and since on DVD release]...


Our story deals with psychoanalysis, the method by which modern science treats the emotional problems of the sane.

 The analyst seeks only to induce the patient to talk about his hidden problems, to open the locked doors of his mind.

 Once the complexes that have been disturbing the patient are uncovered and interpreted, the illness and confusion disappear... and the evils of unreason are driven from the human soul.





Not necessarily always put in the context of what happened when her affair with Roberto Rossellini was made public (which Stig Björkman’s documentary Ingrid Bergman in Her Own Words (2015) does well¹ [shown in 2015 at The Arts (@CamPicturehouse), and also at Cambridge Film Festival 2016 (@camfilmfest)]), Ingrid Bergman’s remark, about her career (as well as strongly-held disapproving attitudes towards her life), that she went from being a saint to a whore and back again is often quoted.



Even if Kim Newman [interviewed on the Hitchcock series of DVD releases] thinks of Spellbound (1945), unlike Notorious (1946) (where Bergman plays opposite Cary Grant), as more David O. Selznick’s film than Hitchcock’s, both have plenty to observe on how women are regarded (and they were written by / credited to Ben Hecht) : the latter has Bergman (in the role of Alicia Huberman) as a woman who is ‘notorious’, because of 'who she is' and 'what she does' (whereas a man need not be). As if marrying a man to spy on him were not enough to demonstrate her loyalty to anti-Nazi causes, she needs to prove herself worth Devlin’s (Cary Grant’s) love and respect (despite what is unjust cynicism, rooted in jealousy, on his part) - whereas the former’s Dr. Constance Petersen is, as a female psychoanalyst, actually seen treated with... no more respect.



At Green Manors, which sounds very formal and proper, is where we initially see her putting up with the attentions of Dr. Fleurot (John Emery), one of her fellow analysts, and who even has the nerve to kiss her to see whether he can interest her in him : this action is, of course, partly exaggeration for effect, the effect being both to show that her colleagues are boors (as we later see, when she has spent the afternoon with the presumptive Dr Edwardes, and has to listen to their condescension and mocking), and that Constance, somehow (and contrary to what the world will later criticize in Bergman’s private life), has not hitherto experienced desire for a man [which even Dr. Petersen's peers 'jokingly' want to see as frigidity, and, after the fake Edwardes has disappeared, Fleurot calls her the human glacier, and the custodian of truth : shortly after which Murchison says that Fleurot's colleague and he are offending by their callousness, and 'retain the manners of medical students'].


 Hitchcock and Hecht both know that these are the public ways of the world then, that men think themselves so irresistible that they either scorn a woman for not choosing them, or force their advances on her by making her tolerate being kissed : in disguising this behaviour as the so-called battle of the sexes, neither is necessarily colluding with it, but it is in meeting the character of Constance’s psychoanalytic mentor, Dr. Alex Brülow, that the origins of her attitude towards her own sexuality become clear.


Centre shot, Dr. Alex Brülow (Michael Chekhov), casually waving a large paper-knife around...


Hearing Alex Brülow, played by Michael Chekhov, as a typical Germanic Jung-type figure², we may nonetheless realize, behind what he says, that he has always been sexually attracted to her³, but knows that he is so much older, and that her affections for him – as a teacher, and father figure – are different³ (though, as he sees it, she patronizingly thinks him incapable of seeing through her ruse of presenting JB and herself as on honeymoon, though they do not even have any suitcases, etc., etc.).



So, Alex tells her that he is glad that she is there to make his coffee the way that he likes [Cook me my coffee in the morning, and the house is yours, at which Constance, out of sight, grimaces], and he is keen to say things to the same effect that (as his friend Zannenbaum used to say) Women make the best psychoanalysts, until they fall in love - after that, they make the best patients, etc., etc., all of which is a clear indication that, all along, Constance has been behaving to please him, to be 'a good analyst'.

(The name implies being constant, after all – just as it does in Chaucer, in The Clerk’s Tale – but Ingrid Bergman does, as in Chaucer, stretch our credulity by the extent to which she is prepared to trust Gregory Peck, despite all the signs – put in her and our way – that he may be dangerous, and not worthy of her trust. Even Murchison, in the closing scene with Constance, says Charming loyalty – one of your most attractive characteristics, Constance !)



John Ballantyne (Gregory Peck), after Dr. Brülow has knocked him out with bromide

In essence, the sexism that Hecht and Hitchcock exploit most is that of Alex Brülow [we actually see Constance smile at the house detective at the hotel, who thinks that he knows ‘human nature’, and can read her as a librarian, or a schoolteacher, and is, later, irritated to have been deceived by his own prejudice as to who she was, and why she was there...] :

 Alex has more than ‘mixed motives’, at least³, for wanting to discourage Constance in believing in John Ballantyne, but is passing them off as disinterested doubts. He is supporting her, despite them [he bluntly says, of her, Look at you : Dr. Petersen, the promising psychoanalyst, is now - all of a sudden - a schoolgirl, in love with an actor - nothing else !], because he does not wish to alienate her (and really hopes, as indicated at the end of the film, that she will be proved wrong⁴ ?). Of course, none of it is, in any sense, plausible, but we enter into it as in a film, where Salvador Dalí has been a contributor to a dream world, and where the psychoanalytic process can be ‘hastened’, and can do its work just with one night’s sequence of dreams ?



Unwittingly, we hear these origins alluded to on the train to Gabriel Valley, after they have left Alex. When Constance Petersen says the following words to John Ballantyne (Gregory Peck), he is distracted – as she eats – and becomes visibly more and more anxious, but she has faith in him, and so is not troubled : yet it is an insight, albeit underscored in this way by the man who sits opposite, into her nature, and how it has come to be, such that quite a short scene actually seems quite longer (and we then pass over how the night is spent, and they arrive the next day).


 I always loved very feminine clothes, but never quite dared to wear them.

 I’m going to, after this, I’m going to wear exactly the things that please me. And you.

 Even very, very funny hats.

 You know, the kind that make you look like you’re drunk.


Less plausible than any of the truncated dream-interpretation is that Dr. Murchison (Leo G. Carroll), knowing what he did to Dr. Edwardes and where he left John Ballantyne, leaves all of this to unfold before us – if we know the film, we see him make small touches that attempt to distance himself from Edwardes or what happened⁵, and yet they are not convincingly those of a man who must know that his best chance of surviving as head of Green Manors is by other than what he allows to happen, or does... ?


Dr. Murchison (Leo G. Carroll), ensuring that the note from 'JB' reaches Constance


 Essentially, Murchison leaves it to the improbability of what we see unfold - just as the film would have us credit Constance that she is, all along, doing the right thing - and that he hopes to elude being detected by maintaining a poker face⁵, as at The Twenty-One Club.






End-notes :

 ¹ Though Björkman unobligingly does not properly name Bergman's non-famous initial or third husbands [and, not unusually, IMDb (@IMDb) cannot say who they are either], which is not the least of his film's flaws...

² In this fairy tale of a film (we believe it, because we do not know any differently), where psychoanalysts all sleep / live on the premises, and naturally ‘go into theatre’ when one of the patients has injured someone.




 ³ Yet is there a hint that Alex may have drugged Constance, as he does JB, and have had sex with her in the room in which she used to stay, and which she says looks different to her, now that she is there with Ballantyne-to-be… ? [Seeing them off to bed, Alex ambiguously says Any husband of Constance's is a husband of mine, so to speak... Near the end of the film, Alex has reintroduced Constance to Green Manors, and the physical intimacy is there between them once more. And, right in the closing shot, he has to reiterate this comment, and relinquish Constance...]

(Constance talks as if she know what she is doing, in such a situation, that the couch is for her, and the bed for Ballantyne – which is what we see. But what sort of fairy-tale notion of being a doctor to the man with whom she is in love has her believe that doing this is some sort of useful norm for such a professionally unacceptable position ? [If, just if, Alfred Hitchcock had ever meant us to forget for a second that this was Ingrid Bergman on screen, would he have cast her – and not someone relatively anonymous (though she was one of producer David O. Selznick’s 'discoveries', and so casting was pretty much settled) – to be utterly convincing as this psychoanalyst, who actually breaks (as far as one can judge) all the professional rules in the book ? !

When Matt Damon and Ben Affleck wrote Good Will Hunting (1997) (and both appeared in it, the latter as ‘Chuckie’ Sullivan), can we any more just take at face value that Dr Sean Maguire (Robin Williams) really is literally to be taken to represent even some sort of maverick psychologist – any more than Constance can be a practising psychoanalyst of any age, who has never been in love before, but falls for John Ballantyne (first, in the mistaken guise of Dr Edwardes) within a matter of hours ?]


Seemingly, the film was marketed in Italy as io ti salverò ('I will save you')


⁴ Alex wakes JB (Gregory Peck) roughly, just after Constance has pleaded with Alex, getting very close, face to face, and he has said that he will pretend that what he is doing makes sense, if she makes him coffee - very reluctantly, Alex drops her hand, as she goes towards the kitchen : You don't like me, papa, JB says, soon after Alex has engaged him in conversation. [In the dream-analysis, where Constance again momentarily looks away, Alex enthusiastically says, to her, If you grew wings, you would be an angel !, just after telling her that JB is the patient, and that You are not his mama - you're an analyst!]

⁵ When Dr Edwardes' secretary arrives at Green Manors, Murchison declares that the imposter has certainly killed the real Dr Edwardes, and describes his trying to take Edwardes' place 'to pretend that his victim is still alive' in these terms : This sort of unrealistic act is typical of the short-sighted cunning that goes with paranoid behavior. (And yet Murchison makes sure that Constance sees JB's note, and that her responses to Fleurot's 'callousness' are not overlooked, as if willing her to follow JB where he has gone...)

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