Twelve Films At Christmas - 5 & 6

 

In my limited and amateur stage career, the most taxing emotionally of the plays I have been in is The Diary of Anne Frank. This is a daunting text for any amateur group but we were brilliantly directed by JK and, I think, pulled it off. By its very subject matter it has to be a claustrophobic piece and I had my doubts that it could properly be presented on film. Having watched the 1959 movie, I still have those doubts. Don't get me wrong, the film works but its presentation in Cinemascope is plain wrong. As well the film suffers from one particular piece of miscasting and is too long. I would still recommend it but this frighteneng tale fits better on the stage. 70/100.

The Colditz Story may share the same historical space as Anne Frank, but is different kettle of fish altogether. This is a broadly faithful telling of the Boy's Own heroics of would-be escapees from Nazi imprisonment. There is a predictably reliable troupe of British character actors on display and it rattles along. 69/100.

Twelve Films At Christmas - 3 & 4

An Inspector Calls is a 1954 screen adaptation of J.B. Priestley's 1945 stage play. I suppose I should declare an interest - I played Arthur Birling on the stage. A fascinating role - an industrialist caught up in his own importance and blind to the terrors about to be unleashed on the world (the play is set in 1912). The play is masterful and, Midsummer Night's Dream aside, the best in which I appeared in my limited am-dram career.  

The play is designedly claustrophobic - befitting the enclosed and comfortable world of the Birling family. A frequent problem with movie adaptations is that they feel duty-bound to open up the world of the play. An Inspector Calls is no exception to this problem. The flash-back technique takes the place of the play's taut, almost confessional, exposition of the flaws of the assembled characters. As the inspector (for no reason that is discernible to me, renamed Poole in place of the play's Goole) Alastair Sim is excellent. This is a perfectly decent movie but if the chance presents itself you should see the play. 61/100. 

When We Were Kings is a curiosity. It is a time capsule of a film. It assembles documentary footage surrounding the 1974 Foreman v Ali heavyweight title fight in Zaire. The film itself had originally been projected as a record of the 'Black Woodstock' concert held at the same time as the fight (the fight was delayed due to an injury to Foreman). It ran into problems of copyright and the film never saw the light of day until 1997. The stunning result of the fight is correctly part of the lore of the twentieth century. Ali and (to a necessarily smaller degree) Foreman are titanic figures. The film gives us insight into the articulate warrior Ali. We see the emergence of the malign influence of promoter Don King. An important record of a moment in history. 70/100. 

More Films - Great Ones This Time

And I use the term advisedly.

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (did you know that the alternative 'dwarves' was Tolkien's invention to give his dwarfs more literary dignity - no, neither did I) changed the face and direction of cinema. It remains an alluring culteral artefact - beautifully drawn, funny and, yes, competently scary. 9.5/10.

Billy Wilder's Ace in the Hole (1951) is quite brilliant. An innocent man (one of only two such in the film) is trapped underground and a vulpine journalist (Kirk Douglas magnificent) connives to keep him there so that he can prolong the story. An early condemnation of the gutter press and the vile public that sustains it. Find it in Sky Cinema. 9/10.

Here's a bit of news - I'm rehearsing for a very minor role in panto at the moment - Snow White as it happens. Now my usual place as the baddy wasn't available, what with the Queen being female and all, so I'm the largely absent King (I blame him for the whole thing - poor parenting etc) who comes on at the end and dispenses good will. And here's  a tip - don't agree to do the props for a panto. It's bloody murder.  

Learning Lines/Forgetting Lines

Be careful what you wish for. As I faced the second night of The Winslow Boy I had spoken of second night over-confidence. Well sure enough one line completely eluded me in the second act and there was no one to cover for me this time. The dreaded prompt was needed. Bollocks.

Nights three and four were, however, much better. Perfect would be a misnomer but at least I got a representation of every line out and into the play. A Good play. All in all a good run. Well knackered by its end.

A picture which should be seen

The world can seem a mad, bad place so there is much for people to get agitated about. But people seem drawn to misapplying their intelligence - read this for starters - Open Casket. The museum curator in this scary little story is, of course, one hundred percent correct. 

Learning Lines 2

Well last night went well enough thankyou. However my diagnosis of yesterday (that my brain has space enough only for all but two lines of the text) was proven correct. I didn't so much go blank as jump a couple of lines altogether in order to accommodate my handicap. Others managed to work around the defect so it will have looked to the unknowing as if I had a good night.

Which lines will get the old heave-ho tonight I wonder. After a good first night, the second night is always the most dangerous as over-confidence works its evil ways.

Break another leg Big Fat Pig.

Learning Lines

It will be the first performance tonight of The Erdington Players production of The Winslow Boy. This is a seriously wordy but seriously good play. Now don't laugh but I have been cast as the arrogant, Tory barrister Sir Robert Morton. How do they make these decisions?

As old age creeps noisily upon me I have a theory about the learning of lines which has been borne out by two dress rehearsals. The theory goes like this: my head has room enough for all but two of the lines I have to learn. The problem is that there is no telling which two lines will have vacated the mental space at  any given juncture. All I can do is take to the stage in dread fear of that moment when the mind goes blank and you await the bloody prompt. There is no cure for this and it is too late to back out now. So it goes.

As a humbling example of the herculean rote learning of the professionals I note that in 1935 Olivier and Gielgud alternated nightly as Romeo and Mercutio. I'm not sure of the artistic purpose but hellish impressive nonetheless.

Break a leg Big Fat Pig.

Arrivederci Bologna

Now on the train back to Brum at the end of our Bologna excursion - inspired by Rick Stein's televisual exploits and definitely worth the effort and moderate expense.

We finished on a high before we flew out yesterday evening by having a superb lunch at Va Mo La. The lesson is to listen to your host, in this case the diminutive Anna whose sister's apartment we had rented. We tried two of the restaurants she had recommended and each was superb. Which sums up Bologna nicely. Known as Italy's red city both because of its red buildings and because of its left politics; known also as The Fat due to its love of food - they're not wrong there.

So now it will be back to the grindstone of the thesis and the terror of learning my lines for The Winslow Boy at the end of the month. I will be playing Sir Robert Morton, the arrogant barrister - how do I get these parts?

Keeping My Hand In

If you go all the way back to my very first blog entry, you will find the words of the very eminent and admirable Ian Marchant, the man who set me off down this route. His first rule bears repetition - 'Writers Write'. So this is me, a little damaged by recent events, keeping my hand in. I've been a bit poorly in the head again but it now seems to be under control - thanks, despite all its fallibility, to the NHS, but thanks most of all to the love of a good woman.

But enough of such things. I'm still deciding how to make sense of the whole Trump thing - possibly the best view is that it is western society's postmodern joke upon itself. Who's laughing?

On the subject of bad jokes I could be found last week in The Erdington Players' revival of the stage version of Are You Being Served? If you don't know the original it is pointless me trying to describe its mutiple political improprieties to you, but do go on YouTube and you'll see what I mean. My health meant I enjoyed the process of the production less than the norm but I avoided any pratfall or obvious memory loss and I'm glad I did it. The comic mechanisms are actually quite clever but there is an air of inappropriateness to doing pussy jokes in a church hall. All part of life's rich thingy? Or am I getting priggish?

a film

Two films to report on: one of which will be familiar to regular readers. But before I get to that, what are we to make of Kingsman? This has its tongue lodged very firmly in its cheek as it pastiches Bond et al. The violence had, I suppose, a comic point to it. The language was unnecessarily rich (and yes that is me saying that) but in the end I was suitably diverted by it all. 6/10. But not even vaguely a patch on Hoop Dreams, which can be found hidden away on Netflix. If you have never seen this gargantuan documentary about American high school basketball, please track it down. It is one of the best dozen films ever made. 9.5/10. 

a truly great film

Feeling Old

I feel old most of the time these days. I lack energy and rather more worryingly I have to search around for optimism. It seems to be a condition of encroaching decrepitude that one feels that the world is, despite best efforts, going to hell in a hand cart. What follows is likely to be a disorganised ramble over the state of my world.

On 11 November I happened to mention the "muderous misogynists of ISIS". I did so disparagingly and perhaps flippantly. Two days later these barbarous scumbags massacred 129 souls in Paris. Less than a week later football fans of England and France together sang La Marseillaise. There is always hope.

On the evening before the Paris atrocity I happened to have watched Zero Dark Thirty, Kathryn Bigelow's engrossing procedural on the decade long hunt for Bin Laden. It begs questions about the propriety of "enhanced interrogation" aka torture and, indeed, questions about the value of the whole enterprise to kill Bin Laden. A very good film and proof, as if it were needed, that Bigelow is several times better a director than her over-lauded ex-husband James "Titanic" Cameron. 8/10. America makes films about these issues for commercial release. ISIS (or whatever one must fashionably call them in the post Parisian angst) obliterate ancient monuments. Go figure.

This entry is lacking direction, a product of my malaise. Today we have had the Chancellor's Autumn Statement, notable not so much for Osborne's abandonment of his plans for wretched Tax Credits but for the utter poverty of the Opposition response to it. The Labour Party, author at its best of the post-war welfare consensus, is currently a dangerous joke, led by an intellectul make-weight. This is a bad thing and it rather depresses me.

Traffic in Birmingham. What on earth is going on? This is also a bad thing.

Still, the panto went quite well last week, at least the audiences seemed to enjoy it. I found it pathetically enervating. This may be my malaise or may be the cause of my malaise. Hopefully the latter and a good snooze will prod me out of it.

For a few days I have been out of love with literary theory. This is a bad thing if you're trying to do a PhD. Is the theory industry not in danger of self-indulgence bordering on fraud?

A new series of The Bridge is screening on BBC4. This is a good thing. Saga Noren - what a creation.

Our central heating is playing up. This is a bad thing.

Russia and Turkey, neither terribly sympathetic countries, have been having a stab this week at starting World War III. Kindly get a grip. There are bigger fish to fry than each other.

Time for Grumpy to have that snooze. 

Pantomime As A Theatrical Form

Here I am talking about the peculiarly British pantomime, that melange of fairytale, slapstick, music, loose plot, audience participation and mild innuendo. I'm in one this week which has rather got me thinking about this peculiar beast. Despite my role as Abanazar (another for my career collection of grumpy middle aged men) I have to confess that I am not a completely convinced advocate but I think I need to set aside any snobbery and acknowledge that is the only form of live theatre that many Brits are ever exposed to, or want to be exposed to. It is thus important.

As with most things it needs to be done well. Done badly it is execrable. I would even go so far as to say that the margin for error is smaller than with straight theatre. Our Aladdin is at the point of final dress rehearsal and thus far ours is not done well. We have tonight to get our shit together - that's a luvvie term. The biggest danger is self-indulgence by the performers, most particularly the dame and the villain. Even broad comedy requires a deft touch to be enjoyable. The other great danger is taking it for granted and treating the production of it with anything other than minute care and attention. This realisation has all come to me a bit late in the day and I am healthily terrified about the impending process. Oh yes I am. 

Busy, Busy, Busy

Oh darling, we were simply wonderful. From the stamina-sapping self-indulgence of Cheltenham to the, well,  stamina-sapping self-indulgence of amateur dramatics. The Boy Roberts gave the world his Rafe Crompton last week. Four performances of variable quality with a prelude of a truly awful dress rehearsal on the Monday. The play was Bill Naughton's Spring and Port Wine - if you do come across a production of it I suggest you give it a chance because this is a seriously good little play. My best line (I was by way of a change a stern patriarch) - "I'll thank you not to dip your nib where there's no ink."

Friday night was the by now traditional cast and crew curry at Shaban - I'm a sucker for their Butter Chicken. Shaban

Quite the most extraordinary culmination to the Six Nations - bucket loads of tries and excitement. Let's just get it clear that England did not lose the championship last Saturday but rather the previous week when they butchered so many scoring chances against Scotland. Such profligacy is unprofessional I'm afraid. Full credit however to the well-honed skills of the triumphant Irish.

Here's something you haven't heard in these pages before - whatever happened to the quality of parliamentary draftsmanship? If you are at a loose end and want to check out how the art has ben lost please consider the  Health and Social Care Act 2008 (Regulated Activities) (Amendment) Regulations 2015. I did this afternoon and I'm telling you they're shocking. But it all makes work for the working man to do.

An Upward Curve

I think we will have some good news to share in the near future but I must keep quiet for now. Suffice to say that the week started as gloomily as do most but got better as it progressed. Plus, I swam 750 metres yesterday and ran a couple of miles this morning. My back is stiff and the troublesome ankle is still a little tender but the new tights and the Oakleys are doing their job and protecting me from other injury.

Spring is just around the corner and a gentleman's thoughts turn to Cheltenham and then to amateur dramatics. The Festival is less than a month away and it can't come soon enough. Mind you if it arrived any earlier that would mean that I was out of time to learn the bucketload of lines I have to master as Rafe Crompton in Spring and Port Wine. Intimidating but another cracking part. Best line - 'I'll thank you not to dip your nib where there's no ink.' Once again I play a somewhat forbidding and grumpy middle-aged man. It's a bloody good job that casting directors can see past my benign exterior.

Happy Valentine's

And to add to the joy, I have in prospect an afternoon of Six Nations rugby and an impudent little prosecco. As for that rugby, another important afternoon in the development of this English side. Italy will be doughty and obdurate but England need to be putting them to the sword to back up the outstanding win in Cardiff. Later on we have the beautifully coached Ireland against the plain bonkers enigma that is France. Cheers.

From The Director's Chair

It's over, my first experience of theatrical directing. Our production of Coward's Hay Fever ran for four performances last week and it all went pretty much swimmingly. I hadn't dared to blog about it along the way for fear of somehow jinxing it.

Conclusions? For the duration of ordinary rehearsals one feels a degree of control; when technical and dress rehearsals are reached one feels woeful; during the run one feels utterly impotent; at all times one feels rather more than mild terror.

What of Hay Fever? It may be Coward juvenilia but that doesn't stop it being good. Coward always made out that he eschewed depth but no man is the best judge of his own plays. This is a play about apres la guerre insincerity, but written with a caustic sincerity. 'We none of us ever mean anything' says Sorel Bliss in a rare shaft of self-awareness.

To all the players and helpers thank you for the opportunity. Would I do it again? Yes of course - but not just yet - learning lines is much more manageable.

Thursdays Belong To Me

I work Monday to Wednesday and the plan is that Thursday belongs to me and Friday will belong to Walter Bagehot, Shakespeare and other matters postgraduate. That's the plan but as per my previous lament I'm generally shagged out by Thursday and manage nothing more than loafing about feeling sorry for myself. So last week I actually did something on Thursday and indeed I did something yesterday, even if it was working (reason for which to follow).

 damned funny old chap

I am in the early stages of directing a production of Noel Coward's Hay Fever (November 19 to 22 since you ask) and so took myself to Bath to see the Theatre Royal production. Lovely old theatre and an estimable rendition with Felicity Kendall in the lead. I can strongly recommend Bath and in particular the user-friendly Park and Ride scheme. No charge for the parking and £3.20 for the return ticket which deposits you in the centre of town. Had my habitual glass of sauvignon blanc before the show in a busy pub where, as in so much else, a Clive James lyric came to mind - 'I like to see a servile barman hustle'.

So that was last Thursday. And yesterday was work on account of attending Joy Collis's funeral on Wednesday. A bumper attendance and a just air of celebration for ninety-three years well lived.

There's a lot to have opinions about at the moment, not least the unedifying spectacle that is the Scottish independence referendum. Alex Salmond finally got his way and goaded David Cameron onto the hustings. It occurs to me that the most astringent analysis is that David Cameron is as odious to the Scots as Salmond is to the English. As for poor old Miliband, he is the same to very nearly all people - a tired joke. As for Nick Clegg, well, so what.

Back On The Chain Gang

Three cracking days at Cheltenham, all involving degrees of inebriation, two culminating in a curry and one generating a profit. For four days every Spring it really is the best place on earth.

My age is catching up with me and the days at the Festival left me footsore and brainsore. I then refereed a decent enough game of rugby on the Saturday and I'm still stretching out the stiffness six days later. No rugby this weekend coming because I have the technical rehearsal for the production of Anne Frank's Diary wherein I am treading the boards next week. I know my lines but not necessarily in the right order. This can be very confusing for my fellow thespians. I put it down to my age. And no I'm not playing a nazi - why does everyone ask me that?

The beautifully prepared Ireland won the Six Nations and the richly deserving Brian O'Driscoll thereby got the send-off he deserved. If you bump into me I will explain how that arch poseur Steve Walsh once again got the last decision of a major international wrong. He is a very good referee with a peculiar gift for unpunished big errors. While we're on the subject of rugby, can anyone please tell me how it is other than confoundingly stupid for England to have agreed to play a test match in New Zealand less than a week after the Premiership final thus inevitably denying themselves a coterie of their best players .

On the subject of Brian O'Driscoll, Keith Wood opined that O'Driscoll has been one of the three greatest figures of the professional era, alongside Richie McCaw and Dan Carter. It is telling that an Irish commentator could so readily ignore the career of the only Northern Hemisphere player ever to have lifted the World Cup, Martin Johnson. This omission would be deemed a calumny if it involved other than an Englishman. Hey ho.

I was never conscious of him as Viscount Stansgate, saw him speak as Anthony Wedgwood Benn and observed him with grudging affection as Tony Benn. The reaction to his death has been interesting and will get a post of its own. As will my confession about the middle-aged good sense that underlay my recent purchase of a new car. Be back soon.

Thought(s) For The Day

This An Inspector Calls business has the power to make you ponder a bit. Though not last night during an epically, comically, worryingly inept technical rehearsal. Still a good night's sleep and an enjoyable perusal of the Argentinian Pumas dismembering the curiously uninvolved Welsh in Cardiff (catch highlights at Wales v Argentina) have got me out of a mild pessimism and back on the philosophical treadmill, in between bouts of line learning. Which treadmill has generated the energy to cut and paste these conflicting gobbets of wisdom.

But just remember this. One Eva Smith has gone - but there are millions and millions and millions of Eva Smiths and John Smiths still left with us, with their lives, their hopes and fears, their suffering and chance of happiness, all intertwined with our lives, with what we think and say and do. We don't live alone. we are members of one body. we are responsible for each other. And I tell you that the time will come when, if men will not learn that lesson, then they will be taught it in fire and blood and anguish. Goodnight. (Inspector's final speech in An Inspector Calls) 

Now where there are no parts, there neither extension, nor shape, nor divisibility is possible. And these monads are the true atoms of nature and, in a word, the elements of things.
(Gottfried Leibnitz 1646-1716) 

The state is the great fictitious entity by which everyone seeks to live at the expense of everyone else.
(Frederick Bastiat 1801-1850)
 

Or are they conflicting? Discuss - as examination questions often used to say.

Peering Over The Fiscal Cliff

I saw the wholly laudable National Theatre production of Timon of Athens last week, another very worthwhile day trip to that London. The professional critics have had their say so Simon Russell Beale needs no extra boosting from this amateur but there was much to admire and stimulate even beyond his central brilliance: the staging, Hilton McRae as Apemantus, the not so sly digs at certain celebrities (I wonder if Tracy Emin saw herself), the seamless editing of the difficult (and some argue incomplete) text and, not least, the adequacy of the pre-performance sauvignon blanc. It is a play that sits very nicely in an atmosphere of capitalistic self-doubt. Its run was sponsored by Travelex - money changers in the cultural temple.

I saw Timon whilst in the middle of reading Atlas Shrugged, a novel to which I will return in a later blog but whose themes, much as your modern bog-standard American liberals might like to deny it, chime rather nicely with this unfamiliar corner of Shakespeare. And by another nice coincidence this all sits with rehearsing An Inspector Calls and playing the tragic apologist for 'hard-headed practical men of business' Arthur Birling. Arthur's not all bad you know, but his wife, well that's a different matter.

And just to bring all this into sharper focus we have had an American election which was fought between two schools of legalised plunder - immoral capital and thieving state. As the song goes, this is an age of miracle and wonder, but it is also an age of moral vacuum. But hey ho, it's only a game and, as my old mate Arthur Birling suggests, a man has to make his own way.   

What I Did On My Holidays. Day 4.

A quiet day to finish this too short break on account of Sharon feeling under the weather. Still it's an ill wind etc and it gave me the chance to start learning lines for An Inspector Calls. Also the opportunity to read some more of Atlas Shrugged (don't condemn me yet - judgement to follow in the fullness of time) and to listen to the download of a BBC production of Inspector. 

In deference to Sharon's health we shelved the Pol Roger for a more auspicious occasion and went to the cheaper end of the cellar, well it's the garage actually. I did however do what will doubtless be the final barbecue of the season. The primeval thrill of open fire cooking is yet more exaggerated by the fall of darkness over the flames. Show me the power of man's red flower, as King Louis so astutely demanded in the canonical Jungle Book, Disney version not Kipling natch, though family lore has it I read the latter when little more than a foetus.

We're so retro darling, you know we even have a VHS player at our country estate and it was on this venerable machine that we watched Wilde, a copy of which would appear to have been lying unwatched for a decade and a half. Not bad actually, the first half too fragmentary, the second (once the odious Bosie appears on the scene) more compelling. Stephen Fry very good as Wilde but the revelation to me was Jude Law, commandingly loathsome as Bosie, capturing what Roger Ebert describes as the character's 'fatuous egotism'.

Caught a nice line while station hopping yesterday on the way to the bottle bank (we have a gold account) - 'Me, a narcissist? If I was a narcissist I'd be the first person to know about it.'

An Inspector Calls

I don't look anything like that

And so we move on from that dreadful old fascist Egeus to ... that dreadful old fascist Arthur Birling in An Inspector Calls. I rather seem to be cornering the market in these types. Funny that. I'm about to send out a search party for redeeming features.

The Erdington Players present An Inspector Calls at Holly Lane UR Church, Erdington, 14-17 November. Watch this space.  

What I Did Last Summer

The observant will notice that the Boy Roberts is missing from the cast photo above (traffic jam M5) but you will see me in my court finery if you run the video. Darling I was simply marvellous.