An ambiguous angel or Talking Heads sing Heaven is a skating-rink

This is a review of The Bishop's Wife (1947)

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17 December

This is a review of The Bishop's Wife (1947)

One could endlessly compare The Bishop's Wife (1947) not just, of course, with It's a Wonderful Life (1946), but with, amongst others, Miracle on 34th Street (1947), City of Angels (1998) and Angel-A (2005), and it is only in the relationship in the latter two between Ryan and Cage, Rasmussen and Debbouze, that there is any way that they parallel this film.

A lovely, angelic role for the winning Cary Grant in The Bishop's Wife (1947) at @CamPicturehouse this evening - and Christmas snow !
— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) December 17, 2013

Moving straight on, Cary Grant (as Dudley) does things with a glance or a smile that are pure charm, and the match with David Niven (playing Bishop Henry Brougham) seems dissatisfyingly unequal for much of the film, so much that one starts pondering whether maybe Jack Lemmon would be better, except that Niven is deliberately being this character whom some might describe as passive aggressive, seeming confused, unfocused, and probably quite afraid (and alone) : in the last twenty minutes or so, all comes clear, and it is not Niven delivering a duff performance at all.

Cary Grant peers blessedly and knowingly into your soul in THE BISHOP'S WIFE (1947): pic.twitter.com/rh8D6h5GZU

— The Nitrate Diva (@NitrateDiva) January 19, 2018

And, in terms of the effect that Dudley works (although he, too, has gone somewhat off the rails by now), it has to happen that way around to fit in with what went before, with his interaction with and enlivenment of the wife of the title, Julia Brougham (Loretta Young). We start with crossings of the street near Henry's old parish of St Timothy's, and have the first hints in score and event who Dudley might be - we see Dudley just observing, a kindly, amused, interested observer, but ready to take action when a pram runs away, and Grant shows his real class in how he brings off these looks and smiles, as if of a traveller from another land wanting to understand.

When the Professor (Monty Woolley) is introduced, haggling over his tiny Christmas tree with shop-keeper Maggenti and then Julia joyfully joins him, Dudley is outside, watching, though - as in Luc Besson's or Franz Capra's films - he knows people's names, and much more besides, already. We get to see Julia change as she, and Henry's and her household, comes to know Dudley, and Henry, always suspicious and doubting (not to mention a past master at double-booking himself), does not know what to make of things.

It is Niven's closing moments of transformation that make one dismiss the idea that he was no good being a stooge to Grant's artistry, and that his consummate command has had to be suppressed to be the Henry that he was. A relatively easy ride for Young to exude joy, and the Professor to move from feeling bamboozled to being impressed, and, because Niven has to hide so much, one derives benefits from letting The Bishop's Wife run its course, and not think that Grant was outclassing everyone, though (when not being doubled for) he did appear to do a nifty bit of ice-skating - though I cannot imagine, any more than he could gesture with a finger to refill a sherry-glass, that he was really playing the harp.

A good film for Christmas, and many thanks to the Picturehouse chain (@picturehouses) for bringing it to my attention !


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

Man with a mermaid on his arm

This is a review of Leviathan (2012)

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16 December

This is a review of Leviathan (2012)

Thanks to going into Screen 3 (which was the right screen for this evening), I missed Leviathan (2012) at Cambridge Film Festival 2013, but what a treat to catch up with it, once I realized how to watch it ! - the film is like Samsara (2011), in that it is 'about' process, not about particulars.

Afterwards, a woman was complaining to the man with her that there had been no interaction (on camera) with the crew, but he said that he liked that. I agree with him, because that was not its purpose, and it was concerning itself more abstractly with motion, rhythms (which animate the mermaid of this posting's title), action... (Another male separately described the film as 'sensory', although, as I shall go on to say, I think that the sound part is more of a construction.)

The confusion at the beginning - what are we seeing, what is the off-screen voice saying, what is the man with the yellow chain trying to do ? - tends to make one feel that it is necessary to concentrate hard to work out what is happening with these men on a vessel at sea, catching fish (and other seafood). Actually, the opposite is the best approach, to treat this as a symphony of images against a sound-scape (whose artificiality becomes more and more evident*), because the more that one tries to interpret, the less that one sees. It seems better to let the documentary, and what it is showing at any one time, to come to the viewer, which certainly works with Samsara.

With this approach, the water, the sky, the interface between them, and the patterns, and the effects of the surface seen from below, all speak for themselves - when the one man with a hook holds up a ray for the other man to put one into its wings and cut them, watching this for what it is misses the fact that it is a repetition, a rhythmic restatement over time.

If we jump ahead to what the men in a line are doing, we miss them moving back and forth as (which is what they are actually doing, but we cannot yet properly see) they open scallop-shells, we will see the man's arm, and not the mermaid moving with and through him as he works : later, the scallops will be shown us, en masse, being stirred around to get coated and (we may infer) added back to the shell for display / packaging, and, in the meantime, we can just go with the currents of the task, part of what happens at sea on a craft such as this.

Likewise the bird that wants to get beyond the wooden barrier that presumably separates it from where the fish are (it apparently does not think to flap its way over and grab a fish in passing), where, if we watch what it does, there are cycles of effort, until it gives up - or the fish-head lying on the deck near an aperture, which, with the addition of other fish-parts that come into shot, gets knocked into the water, and we wait with this view until it happens again with another fish-head.

Some may not find that profound, and may expect something to tell them what they are seeing, but it chimes in with the Biblical theme, with The Book of Ecclesiastes saying that there is nothing new under the sun (and all, of course, are under the sun, with a time for living, and a time for dying).

The film puts the crew, the fish and other sea-life, the birds on a level - sustained, sometimes very close, observations of a man at the wheel, another operating hoists (with the effect visible by reflection in the screen in front of him), of the men sorting the fish according to whether they can keep them at all, or they need to be in this category to be deheaded and gutted, all of this fits them into the world where the gulls and other birds follow the vessel for what is thrown back as scrap (and the men do what they do not because they love processing fish, but so that the owners will pay them).

With what I call a sound-scape (I did not notice a credit for a sound recordist, so, when the two guys are cutting off the rays' wings, that is presumably foley, though that is not overtly credited either), we seem to dive in and out of the sea, and we hear sounds that are less like the expected sounds of a ship under motive power : none of it is actually music as such, but it is, when not directly mimetic of what we expect to see (we hardly hear the clear sound of sea-gulls, but we see dozens, even - somehow - from above), evocative, and almost has a life of its own :

We are told (by the IMDb entry) that Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Verena Paravel are the directors, producers, writers, cinematographers, editors, and, with Ernst Karel, in the sound department. Karel is credited with editing and mixing sound (captured by the cinematographers ?), but also with sound composition.


As for the old-script typeface** used for a prefatory display of three verses from The Book of Job, which talk about Leviathan, this - if it matters - must be a matter for the viewer as to what it means, but it does not seem unreasonable for the green-hulled vessel that we see cutting with its prow through the ocean is the Leviathan here.

(No, no ship of that name was credited at the end, although the film was dedicated to the crew of a list of other ships, lost off the New Bedford coast, and, whimsically, thanks were given for the assistance of Puffinus gravus (and many another Latin name) alongside the likes of Steve the Greek.)



End-notes

* I chatted briefly afterwards with a fellow reviewer of films, and floated (pun intended !) the possibility that, when one of the crew is shown seemingly watching t.v. (and nothing much moves but his eyes), the voice-over of a t.v. documentary (complete with adverts) about an unhappy crew, working at sea, may not actually have been the programme that the man was fighting sleep to watch. He is going to check.

** Reminiscent of the Gothic script of the inter-titles of Nosferatu (1922) ?


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Fifteen fine festival films

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17 December


Simply put, five favourite films from each of the last three Cambridge Film Festivals (in alphabetical order, ignoring 'The')...


That said, the list has now been enhanced by These are some of my favourite things..., which teases out some of the common themes for you



As if I am not There (2010) - from 2011


Black Butterflies (2011) - from 2011


Dimensions (2011) - from 2011


Eyes on the Sky (2008) (Catalan) - from 2013


Formentera (2012) (German) (Festival review) - from 2012


The Idiot (2011) (Estonia) - from 2012


Kosmos (2010) - from 2011


Marius (2013) (shown with Fanny (2013) - from 2013


The Night Elvis Died (2010) (Catalan) - from 2012


Postcards from the Zoo (2012) (Festival review) - from 2012


The Redemption of the Fish (2013) (Catalan) - from 2013


The Snows of Kilimanjaro (2011) (Opening film) Festival review - from 2012


The Taste of Money (2012) - from 2013


Tirza (2010) - from 2011


Upstream Color (2013) (Young Americans) - from 2013


That said, the list has now been enhanced by These are some of my favourite things..., which teases out some of the common themes for you

Nothing's fair in love and court cases

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16 December

Prologue : For many years, employers' organizations lived with a difficult decision in the area of law (now settled against those whom they represented) of entitlement to holiday pay when off on long-term sickness absence. The employers' specious argument, which their mouth-pieces had come up with, was essentially that holiday is for people who are at work and who need a break from work, because they wanted to deny these other people what the Working Time Regulations 1998 appeared to offer them (and so save money), by claiming that they did not need holiday (or to be paid for it).

The claimants, by contrast, had an incentive to try to get paid holiday, if they had exhausted any entitlement to full pay. The one difficult decision was a blemish, but the employers' organizations were best ignoring what that one Employment Tribunal had said - it was not binding on any other Employment Tribunal, because both would be making judgements at first instance, unlike an appeal to the next body up, the Employment Appeal Tribunal.

Why risk going to appeal, losing, and then having a binding precedent ? It is now what is called settled law that the employers' argument was wrong, but how much did they save by sitting on their hands in the intervening time (that difficult decision was around 2001) ? Time for some Tweets :

An interesting case, @ClinpsychLucy - will the ACC politically not appeal the decision, rather than a higher court inconveniently agrees ?
— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) December 16, 2013

If one reads the very short news report, the ACC is quoted for its views at the end :

ACC said it would consider whether this decision "has any wider impact" but took the view it would have "limited" value as a precedent and it would "continue to carefully consider each person's unique situation and circumstances".


Who stands to gain - cui bono ?, in legal Latin - by talking down the significance of the ruling (the piece is vague, because it talks about appeals, but without making clear what status they had, though a district court is usually the lowest level of court) ? And how much money are we arguing about ? :

As usual, peanuts to highly paid judges / experts have to be fought for by claimants, @ClinpsychLucy: The maximum weekly allowance is $84.97
— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) December 16, 2013

I cannot see that the ACC, if the New Zealand system operates a similar law of precedent, has any choice other than to swallow paying this handsome (and backdated) sum - it will chip away at individual claimants (at goodness knows what expense !) who get as far as this one, making each one prove it more likely than not that abuse gave rise to that loose bundle of symptoms called schizophrenia (some of which one can have, others be free from, and which is no effective predictor of effective drug therapy), case by case, saying that their 'situation and circumstances' differ (a sure tautology ?).

The only hope is for the question to get to a higher court (since this does not appear to be one), and what compromises or concessions is it in the ACC's interests to make to those individuals who fight this far ? Of course, as with the employers' organizations, they do not want what is called an appellate jurisdiction to get anywhere near the question - they do not want an aggrieved claimant, turned down at this level, to take it further and risk a precedent being made.


Is it all cynical ? Of course it is. When Thatcher's government tried to deny those claiming asylum any resource to public funds (depending on rules about when they first claimed asylum), the courts decided that, if it had intended to make an implied repeal of the National Assistance Act 1948 (for no Parliament can bind any other Parliament not to legislate the opposite - part of what is called Parliamentary sovereignty), it would have had to use clearer language. Judges do not just have to roll over and not do justice, and they can and do make our law in a significant way.

Precedent is part of that, and opponents are quick to say that one case is materially different from another (and thus that there is no binding precedent, known as distinguishing a case), or that, even if it did apply, there are, say, six reasons why the claimant should get nothing (or a nominal amount). Judges know the tricks, because they once played them, and they should try to get to a just outcome.

So the possible good news for those in the UK diagnosed with this 'schizophrenia' is that cases from the Commonwealth have persuasive force or authority, which means that, even if judgement were binding in New Zealand, it is not here, but judges will listen to argument that it is relevant to consider what it says.


Postlude (by Tweet) :

Of course, an insurance-funded claim on the essential facts against, say, a Catholic orphanage could end up going to appeal, @ClinpsychLucy
— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) December 16, 2013

Taking which further here...


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

This person, with chaos in her wake

This is a review of Mary Poppins (1964)

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15 December

This is a review of Mary Poppins (1964)

It's a truism about Mary Poppins (1964) that Dick Van Dyke is meant to be a Cockney as Bert (in the extended, animated country-scene sequence, he is shown with Pearly Kings and Queens after the horse-race ?), and that his accent is dire - even if that were true, he is a great asset to the film as a performer, purveyor of home-spun truths, and jack of all trades, and would the children (as some would say, 'the demographic') for whom it was intended have cared less ? Humanity and warmth (and giving a rendition of a patter-song) count for much more !

And that is what the main message of the film is all about, or, as the Hanks / Thompson film has it, Saving Mr. Banks (though there are other, less obvious themes, which will be explored below). It probably makes as little sense to ask, outside that new Disney film, who Mary Poppins (really) is, because, if one swallows a retired admiral considering his roof-top to be H. M. S. Boom, one should not baulk at an explanation of someone who says I never explain (she may actually have said, I never give explanations) : wherever P. L. Travers and / or the film got him from, one need not look further than Wemmick's Castle in Great Expectations (or, in Laurence Sterne, Tristram Shandy's uncle)...

There is no one in this film who fails to please, with David Tomlinson as the father to Jane and Michael, who has to be so restrained in holding back his feelings (as Bert shows the children) until the close of the film, a man who wants to run when he has a sherry and smokes his pipe by the clock, and will not heed the admiral's helpful enquiries and advice; Glynis Johns as his wife, Mrs. Banks, who has found a cause rather than relate to her children (and whose difficulty in being a mother Disney has Travers defend as something that happens), and who delightfully and cheerfully dashes off to sing songs to imprisoned suffragette sisters, leaving her son and daughter in the care of an unknown chimney-sweep; the children, played by Karen Dotrice and Matthew Garber with a suitable mixture of innocence and a desire to get into scrapes; and, of course, the delightful Julie Andrews in the title-role, her diction perfect, her voice sweet and pure, and her own sense of fun (saying to wide-mouthed Michael We are not a cod-fish ! - a little different from Van Dyke's more-broad comedic one.

And, as Van Dyke can, she can dance, of course, and always moves with such grace - just a shame that, in common with less well-lit scenes such as on the ceiling at Mary Poppins' uncle's and the bird woman with her food for tuppence (both of which also suffered from indistinctness), the roof-top activity was a little dark, although I assume some technical reason relation to filming and / or restoration. Otherwise, there is delight to be had from this film's look at nearly 50, and the animated sequence that Travers objected to was enchanting (I was with her with the penguin routine, but it may have not dragged for younger viewers), entering into life from life, which Mr. Banks seems to lack. Even in Bert, when his pavement-paintings get spoilt by rain, we see him take pleasure in literally spreading the colour around.


The main people to whom songs are given are Andrews, Van Dyke, and Tomlinson, and all bring out the quality of Richard M. and Robert B. Sherman's strong words and music, making for unforced and unabashed bursting into song. As a film about what life is and is about, Mary Poppins shares territory with It's a Wonderful Life in several ways, with a run on the bank, a man alienated from whatever disturbs his sense of order (Banks) / restoring financial propriety (George Bailey), even if it is actually the lives of his family, and the intervention of a force from without with magical powers (Poppins / Clarence) and the mixing of what we take for granted with how things might be.

The principal message is that living by consumerism* blinds one to what matters in life. There is no suggestion that Mr. Banks resorts significantly to alcohol (a theme in Saving Mr. Banks (2013)), but the admiral's calls from the roof, and the idea that he cannot see what is front of his nose (with the woman selling bird-food), suggest that he has found other ways to adjust to working for the bank (shown, at the end, to have a human face), and Mary Poppins briefly staying helps him see things anew. His liberation, his rediscovering his children's love and their interests, will no doubt say much even to modern youngsters.

As to the covert themes, there is this curious business of Mary Poppins' uncle on the ceiling, and what a crisis this is treated as - a tentative interpretation might relate this to the experience of bi-polar disorder, with, when they have tea in the air, literally being high, for what 'brings them down' is thinking of something sad, and Bert says that he will stay and look over Mary Poppins' uncle when she and the girls leave, and he tries to raise spirits with his 'down in the mouth' joke about eating a feather pillow. (Against that, when Van Dyke, as Mr. Dawes Senior, is told the joke about 'a man with a wooden leg called Smith', he, too, levitates, and his death is said to have been a happy one.)

Still with the bank, being summoned to return at 9.00 has a distinctly masonic air about it - The City is dark as Mr. Banks crosses to it, is let in, and is accompanied to the door by top-hatted men, who almost frog-march him there. The debunking, although comic, suggests a sort of serious ritual, deflated by Banks, when asked if he has anything to say (before he has retorted that he always knows what to say, a self-assurance with which he maybe only fools himself and Mrs. Banks), finds himself saying Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious and even, to his surprise, feeling better for it.

Finally, the care for spending (as Michael wishes to do) tuppence on feeding the birds could translate to not hoarding, but using, the wealth given to us (The Parable of The Talents ?), or even to the invocation to Peter, Feed my sheep...



End-notes

* Often enough wrongly thought of as 'materialism', or 'capitalism', although making money and owning the means of production are best not confused.


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It's a jolly holiday with Disney

This is a review of Mary Poppins (1964)

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14 December

This is a review of Mary Poppins (1964)

When a company celebrates an anniversary, you can be almost certain that it does so to sell you something – in extreme cases, the complete works of J. S. Bach on CD (151 CDs, to be precise, which, if truthful to yourself, you know that you will never all play, even just once).

In this case, it is two cinema-tickets for everyone in your family, not only to Mary Poppins (1964) (as restored), but to the making-of film, Saving Mr. Banks (2013) - even if it does sound rather like that Spielberg one.

If anyone can be as brisk and British as Julie Andrews, surely Emma Thompson can, even if the plot has – as it is said to have – a licence to make Tom Hanks, as Uncle Walt, more cuddly than he really was (and what, one wonders, did Miss Andrews know of the tussles about authorship and artistic integrity).

So far so good, apart from the question whether a spoonful of sugar (or some larger confection) is going to be necessary to make the [Disney] medicine go down…


Now continued as a review

83 = S : 13 / A : 16 / C : 11 / M : 14 / P : 15 / F : 14

A rating and review of Saving Mr. Banks (2013)

S = script

A = acting

C = cinematography

M = music

P = pacing

F = feel

9 = mid-point of scale (all scored out of 17, 17 x 6 = 102)



This is a film that, for many reasons, should not succeed in being touching – and one cannot quite untease whether what is touching is that it is showing (a version of) the cinematic genesis of a loved childhood film, i.e. working off one’s emotional attachment to the film within the film onto the latter.

Initially, the soundtrack is just too obvious and overpowering, reaching a low with a jazz version of Heigh-ho on Travers’ arrival at Disney HQ (which, according to the loud assertion of a fellow audience member, had been Dave Brubeck’s). Maybe one became accustomed to it, maybe it became more subtle, but it did not work against drawing out emotion from scenes in the way that it had before. (It did not really help that the disturbing, percussive bass notes of the trailer for All is Lost (2013) had created pounding in the heart.)

P. L. Travers, seemingly portrayed effortlessly by Emma Thompson, just cannot, we know continue as she first presents herself, fussing, dismissing, disapproving. (Thompson is perfect for the part, as is Hanks for Disney – he seems to have had his eyes modified to heighten the resemblance, unless he just always looks that way.) And can Disney really do everything nicely to get her to sign her rights to him (which, on her agent’s advice, she has not done) and let him make the film ?

In between, something happens, whereas it could have more closely resembled the confrontation in, say, Frost / Nixon (2008), onto which, at some level, it may be seen to map : what will the breakthrough be that changes the dynamic of declining to sign ? (In fact, the film is a better contender for that category, for, on the face of it, Frost does nothing whatever to elicit an apology from Nixon, just lets him bluster time and time over.)

In this film, a natural star is Annie Rose Buckley, as Ginty, the young Travers, who exudes faith and trust (not least hugged to his arms on horseback) very naturally as well as looking very pretty. Colin Farrell, in the role of her father, seems initially to have been allowed a longer leash, but he is not playing against type, and it does not take us long to be shown that he is as tortured, in his way, as Ray in In Bruges (2008), save that this is a PG, not an 18.

One sees his wife Margaret (suitably quietly played by Ruth Wilson) struggling to relate to his way of loving his daughter, so different from how she is, for they are really quite a way apart, which both pains and paralyses her. One beautiful use of cinematography takes us above a maze of sheets on the line, children, chickens, and parents, momentarily symbolic of how tortuous the relations have become. And then there is Thompson as a grown-up, with an army of pill-boxes at her deployment.

That shot alone tells us that things are not, in conventional terms, going to be simple. It is indicative maybe just of hypochondria, although (seeing Travers) that seems unlikely, and here we come to the nub of the film : why Mary Poppins means something to her to such an extent that she will not bear her character just being called Mary.

She will not have herself called anything other than Mrs Travers (which her driver, played with real humour and humanity by Paul Giamatti*, as a sort of look-alike cross between Bilko and Eric Morecambe, confuses, and keeps calling her just Missus). She just insists on certain things, being or not being, as if just for the sake of it. And this is where my regret lies, that we are in a type of Marnie (1964), but with no Connery to her Hedren to help her open up her mind to psychodynamic change (and explain why she chucks pears into a swimming-pool).

It is just that we have come a little beyond the way in which the earlier decades** showed these matters, and this seems some sort of implausible spontaneous process (though it may have been what happened, or how it was interpreted at the time) that someone should go into what, in effect, is a disasssociative state at the impulse of working on a piece of writing with close, personal meaning.

For me, Disney talking about his childhood and how he relates to it seems a little more likely to have conveyed a message. And, for me, I cannot separate from this film what Andrews and Mary Poppins (1964) meant to my childhood, so it was especially nice both to see contemporaneous stills of Disney, Travers, Andrews and of the storyboards, as well as hear a little of these tapes that Travers insisted being made.


By the way, one goof :

Anyone used to weather-vanes will know that they point in the direction from which the wind is coming, the reason being that the latter part of what rotates resists the wind, and so gets pushed until there is no longer any resistance, when the front, needle part points into the wind (also offering least resistance) and, if the markings around the edge are correctly oriented, at the letter 'E', if the wind is from the east.

This is how the admiral's weather-vane works in Mary Poppins (1964), turning to point to W when the wind has changed and is no longer from the east. This was lost on someone, for, when Ginty is being told that the wind has changed and is coming from the east, W is being pointed at.



End-notes

* Excellent in Sideways (2004) and The Last Station (2009).

** There are some anachronisms : in the 1960s, it was de rigueur for saucer to stay with cup, there were no chains to keep trace of glasses, and no British person was casually diagnosing ADHD (least of all in an adult). (And the rendering of the steam train's progress against the landscape did not quite work.)


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One heckuva film !

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13 December

* Contains spoilers *

Gone with the Wind (1939), seen on Monday night, has been digitally restored, but still runs to 233 minutes...

One thing that one has to get over is its great nostalgia for The South as it was before the Civil War, because that meant slavery, however nice the O'Hara family was to its slaves. Another is that The United States were still segregated at the time of the film's making, as films like Michael Roemer's Nothing But a Man (1964) make clear.

Kitty Scarlett O'Hara, Gerald O'Hara's (Thomas Mitchell's) most winning daughter, is of course played by Vivien Leigh, who would have been around 25 at the time (and only lived until 53) - naturally, an accomplished piece of acting, however old she was supposed to be at the opening of the film, though, much as we might admire O'Hara, we can rarely like her. Leslie Howard, as Ashley Wilkes and about whom she was besotted, was (because of the war) to live to a similar age to Leigh, but was much Leigh's senior at around 45 at the time of filming.

(Such things would commonly matter much more now, as if these were times of greater verisimilitude... A long-shot of Tara, with the building so obviously painted in, or a red sky, supposed to be Atlanta burning, but clearly just a back-drop, is not, though, our modern expectation.)

One of the most striking things about the film, other than O'Hara's steadfast regard for Wilkes, is Max Steiner's music, which underpins so much of the action in a non-distracting way, but, when it wants to bring back the big themes of The South or of the family homestead Tara, does so unmistakably, and weaves in tunes such as Dixie.

Olivia de Havilland was wonderful in the digital restoration of Gone with the Wind (1939) at @CamPicturehouse - complete with intermission.
— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) December 9, 2013

Clark Gable (Rhett Butler) is one of the treasures of the film (38 at the time of filming), and with whom there necessarily is such chemistry with Leigh, believing that she might love him when he knows that (through having overheard, right at the beginning) all that is on her mind is Wilkes, and her carelessly losing two husbands before marrying Butler. The other is Olivia de Havilland's non-judgemental performance as Ashley Wilkes' cousin and wife Melanie, loving Butler and O'Hara much more than they can ever love her.

Rather meanly, O'Hara characterizes Butler, after seeing him for the first time at the ball at Seven Oaks, as 'able to see through my shimmy [sc. chemise] as if I weren't wearing it', which raises the issue of his licentiousness from the start - as if, in her own way, O'Hara were any less licentious, as time progresses, willingly dancing with Butler, although in mourning, at the fund-raising ball in Atlanta for The Confederate Southern Army shortly afterwards, where she has chosen to be because Wilkes will return there on leave.

With Melanie's death, apart from the disconcerting, famous lines, the film is but at an end, except for whether Scarlett will descend into her father's condition, or rise up to win back Rhett by going back to Tara (which she fought for, and then forgot about).


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It's a matter of conscience

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9 December (completed 13 December)

* Full of spoilers - only read if you know the film *

Marius (2013) is a superbly compiled piece of cinema, and, from a second viewing, well worthy (with Fanny (2013)) to be in the top five of selections from Cambridge Film Festival 2013 (@camfilmfest).

The first thing that we see from Marius' point of view is out to sea from the harbour bar, which he helps - when he does not just disappear* - his father César run. Then, when we see him, he looks as though he is in prison (which, metaphorically, he is), because the window is barred. He tries to make Fanny believe, when she appears, that he was looking at her, and there the dichotomy is stated in one.

In his beautiful score, Alexandre Desplat has a muted trumpet theme, which is full of longing, and could be longing for a woman or - as it turns out to be - for the sea. A little later, he has a second main theme that is full of piping, and which comes into its own at the end.

Marius likes to believe that he has rationalized his feelings, telling both César and Fanny that he 'cannot marry', and representing to the former (who believes that it is on account of a mistress) that she - really, the sea - might kill herself, if he ended it. As in so many places in this film, the scene gains its strength, because of dramatic irony, in that we know what is really on Marius' mind. How Marius behaves towards Panisse, when Fanny and he are trying to have a quiet drink in the corner of the bar, shows that he has not rationalized things - even though, at the dance at Cascade, Fanny had tried to tell Marius that she is thinking of accepting Panisse's proposal.


When Fanny takes Marius' advice literally, he tries to back out of it, and then ends up revealing to her the draw of the sea, which - if a rap at the door had had a different message - could have taken him away at a moment's notice. In telling her what he had learnt from the crew of the vessel that came from The Leeward Islands, we hear (in Desplat's music that there is) real poetry, intoxication, love... However, Fanny - characterizing it later as an irrational fascination for the land of the green monkeys - must have misconceived, by believing that his love for her would be stronger and overcome.

Having, feeling as he did, hitherto behaved properly towards Fanny, he allows himself to kiss her and presumably also to believe that he can overcome his inclinations, although he had been on the verge of joining a crew, if he had been needed, that very night.

Weeks later, thinking that he has been deceiving his father (whereas César has told his card-laying friends that he knows his ploy of climbing back inside and locking his door from the inside), he slips out to meet Fanny, and, when she overhears her relationship described as 'a matter of conscience' to the captain who wants Marius to serve, she takes the chance to assure the captain that he will go, because she knows that Marius does not love her, and she cannot bear to hear that he will cry himself to sleep, if he does not go (she believes what is said, for the simple reason that the captain must have known others who had been drawn to the sea, but did not go, and has no expectation that she will persuade Marius to go, as she claims).

When Fanny realizes, from what she has heard Marius say, that he is not in love with her, she has as much reason to want him to go to sea (so that she can 'cover her shame' and marry Panisse), but she probably cannot contrive that her mother Honorine (played impassionedly by Marie-Anne Chazel) gets a lift back from her sister's with M. Amourdedieu** so that the lovers are discovered, and Honorine puts pressure on César, who puts it on Marius.

All of these factors come into play when Fanny urges Marius to go to sea : as she is saying that she will look to his matter of conscience, he will not be forced into marriage, if he goes, and he does want to go. She also wants him to go, because she is ashamed of being deceived by him until she hears him speak to the captain. Here, the actual piping, which had been in Desplat's score, evokes the latter by association, with all its resonance. So Fanny covers for him, occupying César, whilst the ship gets ready for sea, and sails.

Panisse, who could have had a message from Marius for his father, instead just has incoherence after Marius has clumsily knocked some crates over, but still goes to try to alert his former schoolmate César to what is happening at the dock - only he is too busy with Fanny's deception, intended to let Marius go. Whatever Pagnol's screen adaptation of his own stage trilogy might have been, it is scarcely possible to conceive Auteuil's version being any less crisp, with scene seamlessly following scene in just 93 minutes.


End-notes

* He tries to leave Fanny in charge when he runs off for a meeting with the captain at the brothel, and she, presumably not knowing why he has gone there (when she follows), ends up crying on her bed.

** Pagnol keeps the names of his trio of linked characters simple (and also that of Panisse), whereas César's circle of friends have some outlandish ones, such as Escartefigue and Frisepoulet (unless that is Auteuil's deviltry !).


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

Really shot in Wyoming !

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2013
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7 December

89 = S : 14 / A : 15 / C : 15 / M : 17 / P : 13 / F : 15

A rating and review of Nebraska (2013)

S = script

A = acting

C = cinematography

M = music

P = pacing

F = feel

9 = mid-point of scale (all scored out of 17, 17 x 6 = 102)



* Contains spoilers *

It may not only be true of lesser films (well, not true of The Third Man (1949)), but Bel Ami (2012) fails at attempting to pass off London as Paris, and On the Road (2012) is a film that, as this one does, features landscape - just nowhere near, reading the credits, where the various journeys were supposed to be happening.

It is an interesting choice to present this film in black and white, because it really adds almost nothing to what we see except the views of the scenery, which are faultless. With Frances Ha (2013), it worked, it did enhance the film's cinematic qualities, but here - apart from the obvious suggestion that much of life in states such as Montana and Nebraska is being presented as lacking a dimension - it was only the fleeting longer shots in transit that benefited, but, then, so much that I would not have had the film any other way.

And this is a film that says something about acceptance, though that does not mean that I have to accept this highly inaccurate account of it from IMDb :

An aging, booze-addled father makes the trip from Montana to Nebraska with his estranged son in order to claim a million dollar Mega Sweepstakes Marketing prize


I see no evidence that David Grant (also unwillingly known as Davie / Davey, and played by Will Forte) is estranged from his father Woody (short for Woodrow, and acted by Bruce Dern), and it is he, rather than his brother Ross (Bob Odenkirk), who comes for him when he has been picked up by the police at the start. The other descriptions beg the question : what life has Woody led that he is as he is, and can his wife Kate (June Squibb) exculpate herself ?

The course of the film takes us to Hawthorne, where Woody grew up, and where there were at least two women in his life. One, sympathetically and with great naturalness brought off by Angela McEwan, is Peg, whose humanity is evident, and says that Woody knew that she 'would not let him touch all the bases' - by implication, the highly judgemental Kate, his wife (Squibb with great ease makes us dislike her), would. (There is a grim scene in the Lutheran graveyard (Kate is nominally a Catholic), where she calls a dead member of Woody's family a whore for having had sex from the age of fifteen.)

It is here that, bit by bit, we can piece together the influences that have worked on Woody, such as the death of a brother with whom he shared a room, being shot down in Korea when being transferred, and the age at which he and two other men from the town were sent to war, and how he returned from it. The laughter at Woody's expense seemed to have died down by this stage (and, in this respect, the film has the pattern of Philomena (2013)), but where it laid things on a little too thickly was with the vacant relatives, who, for example, are querying the journey-time from Billings, Montana, and even infect David with it, who asks Ross how he travelled over.

At Mount Rushmore (another place that Woody did not wish to see), in what he has to say about the monument not looking finished (which. with his critique, it did not), we are given the insight that how he relates to the world does not mean that he is ignorant and foolish, and, in his way, he just as much speaks the truth as he sees it as Kate does. (Indeed, we hear him dub other drivers idiots, and tell a mechanic that he is using the wrong wrench.)

I think that the script suitably covers objections to some of the things that happen for the purposes of the plot and which get us on the road, and that it works well enough as an exploration of the goals that we set, or expectations that we all have, without needing Woody's background and circumstances - the things that we think that we must have, when really something else (or lesser) might do.

In emotional terms, rather than those symbolic of setting out on a quest (and feeling that compulsion), the film resolves itself - and rights some wrongs - right at the end (even if we do not quite know how it can be done, and maybe it is a bit too pat). What is clear is that David has also been in need of healing from the childhood that he had where he is likened to a girl or a prince, and called beautiful - to assert himself, not least as he does, albeit with a fist, with Woody's former business partner Ed Pegram, and to believe in his worth.

The quest itself turned out to have to be completed, even if it was just to be told that it had not garnered anything except an ironic cap, but probably for other reasons by then. As for having to live with the disparaging Kate, nothing had changed that, and her threats of putting Woody in a home, and she had only defended him out of self-interest, both not to have relatives clamour for money, and to have him as her own victim - except that David certainly has more respect for his father, and in that there is hope...


As for the review on IMDb (by Steven Leibson) that calls this a hilarious comedy, well...

However, I quite liked Mark Kermode's review in The Guardian, so here it is (or gu.com/p/3yvcg/tf, if you wish to share).


There is now a little follow-up piece here...


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

More Haneke than Buñuel ?

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2013
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5 December

Jeune et Jolie (2013) was screened at The Little Theatre as part of Bath Film Festival 2013


How many reviews of Jeune et Jolie (2013) am I going to have to read where its uninspired writer references the completely irrelevant Belle de Jour (1967), just because - whatever the fit - it is the only film that, in each case, he or she can think of where a woman works as a prostitute ?

* Tim Robey* in The Telegraph

* Ian Freer in Empire

* James Mottram in Total Film

* Nigel Andrews in The Financial Times

* Andrew Nickolds at TAKE ONE

And so on...


Have they never seen Natalie (2003) or even Sleeping Beauty (2011), which have far more in common for how the topos is treated ? What, in fact, does a married woman with sadomasochistic fantasies have to do with a seventeen-year-old, who has just uncomfortably lost her virginity ?

Sooner that, though, than being smugly dismissive (Mark Kermode in The Observer) or claiming that Blue is the Warmest Colour (2013) is indisputably better (Brian Viner, Mail Online : Viner says that Jeune et Jolie 'is in no way a match for' the other film, but they are very different films, no more capable of being compared than Superman and Bambi just because both (of J&J and Blue) feature sex.


Reviewers tediously also want a motivation for what Isabelle does. As i** carps :

Ozon's motives in making this film are as inscrutable as those of his teenage heroine Isabelle (Marine Vacth) [...] who, for reasons Ozon doesn't even begin to make clear, decided to embark on a part-time career as a teenage prostitute

They see (as the quotation shows) the fact that no motivation is stated is a flaw, which it might be in a world of perfect rationality, but that is not our world. So, Nigel Floyd (for Film4) reports :

“I didn't really try and understand psychologically who [Isabelle] was," Vacth has said. "I wasn't interested in knowing exactly. And anyway I couldn't, because François didn't tell me anything about her psychology.” The second half of this statement is more revealing than the first. Given that their creative collaboration was so one-sided, it's not surprising that the film suffers from an atmosphere of uncontrolled, unrevealing salaciousness.


Has Floyd even seen the film, if he thinks it salacious, one might wonder.

All this business about motivation is ultimately a dead end, a red herring, and would have one interrogate Amour (2012), when Michael Haneke is on record here, and in relation to other films, that it is up to us how we view them, and there is no one way.

What more do we want, and why, than what the films tells us : that Isabelle's friend Claire and she were approached in the street (Claire previously alludes to this encounter in talking to Isabelle), and the man said his number. Do we need spelt out what impulse led Isabelle to follow up a man interested in her ? Obviously, most girls of her age would do nothing with it, but why should she not register the number and act on it ?


In fact, an answer to why she did is utterly boring, when the fact is that she did, and we see her approaching room 6598 where not her first client awaits her, but Georges, with nothing of what preceded. There is something seriously wrong with the idea of cinema-going if that does not suffice, and critics are unhappy not to be told more.


End-notes

* At least Robey goes on to make this (necessary) observation : 'The film makes more sense if you see it as a companion piece to Ozon’s last one, In the House, which had a 16-year-old male schemer insinuating himself into a series of power plays'.

** In the edition on 29 November 2013.


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

The great hip hop film

This is a Festival review of The Great Hip-Hop Hoax (2013)

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2013
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3 December

This is a Festival review of The Great Hip-Hop Hoax (2013)

It is my approach, with films, to know as little as possible about them as is consistent with being able to make a choice whether to see them.

This one sounded as though it might share common ground with The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle (1980) - to which one member of the audience indirectly alluded in the Q&A with director Jeanie Finlay, by asking whether Billy Boyd and Gavin Bain are actually any good at hip hop - but it is far more interesting : in anything that has someone pretending to be something so long that it becomes questionable whether there is a way back, and, when there is a slide into the sort of existence that kept John Cooper Clarke out of circulation and composition so long, one is facing greater concerns than what The Pistols were in it for.

Mocked by A&R people when they travel down for 13 hours on the bus from Arbroath to London, because they are Scottish, but trying to get recognized for their skills in hip hop*, Boyd and Bain are only spurred on to make themselves be what is necessary to be taken seriously, and immerse themselves in sounding, in words and accent, as if they are from San Jacinto, California (under the name Silibil N' Brains). An initial gig gets them spotted by Chris Rock, who wishes to sign them and, as they need a manager first, sends them to Jonathan Shalit - who gets them a deal with Sony instead. Not, though, the end of their problems but, just before that deal, where they all begin...

Bringing the expectant original journey and disappointed return to life, where at least one of the young men is so hurt that he says that he did not speak all the way, Finlay uses shots of passing scenery to amplify the sense of what they had invested and how cheated and abused they felt. In between, waiting for and before the panel, we have the first use of John Burgerman's colourful and quirky animation, again with Boyd and Bain's comments in voiceover, and its character fits well the tone of the film. A third strand of material, other than recent interviews with Bain and Boyd, and withtheir friends, family and colleagues, is what was recorded on home video made at the time, along with gig and MTV footage and stills, all put together creatively and with flair.

As hinted already, the real focus of the film turns out to be what becomes of the relationship between the two men (although it is now seemingly healed, after they separately contributed to the film, on its being shown on the festival circuit) - it turns out delaying giving the go-ahead for the release of their first single, because Bain is not happy with it and wants to re-record it, means that, because Sony then enters a merger, it never happens, and Boyd essentially tires of waiting around, rather than getting on with life with the woman whom he had recently married.


It is clear from what Finlay says that, with the men giving or publishing accounts of what happened that differ from each other (or from verifiable fact, such as, as Finlay reported, contrary to one's claims to have crashed the BRIT awards and drunk with the stars), she had a difficult time trying to piece together a version of events for the film. She has a telling quotation from Boyd :

Lying is like a drug. Eventually you get carried away, and that’s where you’re out of control. Telling the first lie’s a bit like smoking weed, but after a while you need a stronger hit.


I also confess to having had trouble, which may be personal to me**, remembering which of Boyd and Bain I was seeing in the later interview footage, and in consistently relating that identification to the animation / period material - although, when they made it their business to behave madcap and provocatively to avoid serious questioning, they could act interchangeably (but, though no one realized why, even included the names of fellow hoaxsters Milli Vanilli in a lyric). For real deliberate grossness, for example, we see one openly urinating in public, whilst the other receives the urine on his palms and wipes it on his face ! At such times, it seemed to matter little which of them was playing which part.

This is a thoughtful and interesting piece of film-making, because, behind the antics, the two were so set on staying in character that they even kept in it with the sister of one of them, with whom they stayed when first in London, and also freaked out Boyd's bride not a little. The pressures that they put themselves under by living a lie may not be those weighing on a Raskolnikov, but, past the first steps, they had much to lose, if found out. Remarkably, Rock and Shalit are in the film, but, Finlay told me, the latter only agreed to be interviewed after three years, and she said that Sony had completely distanced themselves.

In the Q&A, someone tenaciously questioned why what he thought the standard of a t.v. documentary (indeed, the film commissioned by the BBC's Storyville series) was being called 'a film'.

Strangest question tonight - "you keep referring to your film as a "film", is that how you see it?" Me: "errrr, yes, it's a film!"
— Jeanie Finlay (@JeanieFinlay) December 3, 2013

I asked about Shalit's response to learning of the deception, describing it as 'philosophical, even amused', and wondering why he had not been more bitter - not appreciating that, as we were told, he was booed in the screening at Edinburgh Film Festival for denigrating Boyd and Bain's background as 'nothing'. It seems that Finlay believes that what Shalit chooses to express as what he thinks of it all now may be a convenient representation of his position...

Having seen Nick Fraser in interview at Aldeburgh Documentary Festival, I asked Finlay whether, as editor, he persuaded her to do or not do anything (having seen something of him in action). She said that he is a formidable figure, and explained that he had commissioned the film, but she had been working with others on the staff.

That said, he had had her pitch the project to him in the BBC canteen, with all sorts of famous faces around, and had banged the table, saying, for example, Make it better ! However, as the film and Finlay testify, he was duly satisfied that it would make a good documentary, which it does.


End-notes

* Apparently, the phrase rapping Proclaimers was derisively used.

** Since it is in the nature of a documentary only to give you the name in a caption on the first occasion (whereas a feature film will typically drop the name in where you cannot miss it and fail to make the association), and here we had two names for Bain.


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