Twelve Films At Christmas - 5 & 6

Denzel Washington and Russell Crowe directed by Ridley Scott, no wonder American Gangster is such a good film. How had it passed me by for so long? Oh well, rectified now. Watched it at Plas Piggy (where I accidentally found out that the tele-box thing can record) in the company of a nice Italian red - is there any other sort, certainly when exposed to my stray-dog palate. The film seems to be in rotation on Film 4 so if you haven't seen it yet, set aside some time to do so. Some have incorrectly characterised it as the 'Black Godfather'. That is unfair to both films - The Godfather is a better film (but, of course, better than most other movies) and American Gangster is not a mere derivative. A fine take on the warping of the American Dream. 86/100.

Our children are of exactly the right age to have been caught up in the maelstrom of Harry Potter mania. DN1 and DN2 both read the books and I feel no shame in saying that I read them as well. There is some ghastly snobbery about these books but as ripping yarns they know few equals and if they brought a new generation to reading then so much the better. What about the films? Not quite on the same level but they do capture some of the atmosphere and for me they always have a Christmas resonance because I remember the excitement of taking the girls to see Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone on a chill winter's day. This is the first of the eight films and the child acting is patchy but not such as to stop you enjoying it. 64/100.

 

Advent 18 Canon

This is a slight cheat on my statement that in the canonical sliver of this enterprise, I am reading books that I ought to have read but have been too lazy to take on. T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land and Other Poems did cross my way when I was at school. I wasn't ready for it, come to think of it probably still am not. No matter, this is dynamite stuff. Elusive, allusive, beguiling. Two extracts stand out for me. First from The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, comes one of those passages I wish I could pass-off as my own:

In the room the women come and go / Talking of Michelangelo.

More striking still is this that served as the inspiration for the title of Waugh's brilliant novel, A Handful of Dust:

And I will show you something different from either / Your shadow at morning striding behind you / Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you; / I will show you fear in a handful of dust.

  

Advent 17 Fiction

Sunday lay so heavily in the air as to become almost nauseating. Maigret used to claim openly, half seriously, half in fun, that he had always had the knack of sensing a Sunday from his bed, without even having to open his eyes. 

Translation is a form of adaptation. Whenever I read a book in translation I am troubled by the thought that something will have been lost in translation. It never occurs to me that something may have been gained. Well, my French is not close to good enough to read Simenon in his native tongue so my introduction to Inspector Maigret is in Nigel Ryan's translation.

Simenon published over four hundred novels. I repeat that - four hundred! Bloody impressive. My Friend Maigret (1949, translation 1956) is a rattling good read and, so far as this uneducated critic is concerned, a laudable translation. It captures a world of instinctive (and occasionally brutish) police work that is long gone.  

Advent 16 Non-Fiction

I love Len Deighton's fictions. He is not, I suppose, canonical in the manner of Le Carre (whose spy fiction I deeply admire) but Deighton has a pace and lack of political pretension that I find enviable. If (and this will never happen I know) I were to teach a course on creative writing I would set my students to read his Game, Set, and Match trilogy as an exemplar for good professional writing.

But today is not about fiction. We are in the non-fiction aisle  of my little library and it is Deighton's excellent account of the Battle of Britain that I want to recommend. Deighton loses none of his stylistic pace and tells the story of an epochal conflict with a commendable freshness. He is not afraid to slay some myths along the way. Fighter is as good as popular history gets. I particularly enjoyed Deighton's pithy evisceration of the reputation of the dreadful Joe Kennedy:

When the election came, Kennedy gave Roosevelt all the support he needed to win. The mystery of his turn-round has never been satisfactorily explained. On the matter of Britain's imminent defeat, Kennedy also changed his mind, but now Britain no longer cared. Robert Vansittart - Halifax's Chief Diplomatic Adviser - wrote, 'Mr Kennedy is a very foul specimen of double-crosser and defeatist. He thinks of nothing but his own pocket. I hope that this war will at least see the elimination of this type.

Now which modern leader does that put you in mind of? Plus ca change .... 

 

Advent 15 Canon

My tentative efforts to address the chasms in my reading have proved fruitful. I came to E.M. Forster with no great expectations. As it turns out I should have turned to him at an earlier time. Where Angels Fear to Tread is a concise, clever and provoking novel. It says much about the nature of prejudice and the daftness of English bourgeois attitudes. It contrasts such attitudes to the looser codes of Italian behaviour, though that is to over-simplify the text. It can be light and comedic which makes the intrusion into the plot of tragedy all the more telling. I quote a quite briliant passage on the allure of Italian cafe society, at least for the male of the species. I'm not sure this is quite what that old romantic Tony Blair had in mind.

Italy is such a delightful place to live in if you happen to be a man. There one may enjoy that exquisite luxury of socialism - that true socialism which is based not on equality of income or character, but on the equality of manners. In the democrarcy of the caffe or the street the great question of our life has been solved, and the brotherhood of man is a reality. But it is achieved at the expense of the sisterhood of women.

A guilty part of me might admit that this is a good description of the milieu of the old-fashioned rugby clubhouses I used to frequent. 

 

 

Twelve Films At Christmas - 3 & 4

Hollywood is an industry -  a very peculiar one tainted by much dross and rescued by occasional artistry. But today is about the dignity of filmic labour and artistry capably inserted into unashamed commercial product. It is a reflection on the work of two directors who are sometimes dismissed as mere technicians, their very capability masking their extreme gift. 

Ron Howard directs Solo: a Star Wars Story with particular panache. Not that it matters very much but this is an origin story for Han Solo, the best and most nuanced of the franchise heroes. It is, as with all the Star Wars episodes, at its best as a fast-paced shoot-em-up. These films are generic descendants of the Westerns that Hollywood used to churn out but importantly these are related to those special (and there are more than you might think) cowboy films that admit of nuance (there's my favourite word again). Great fun - and, oh, it hardly needs saying but Woody Harrelson is excellent. When is he not? 68/100.

Hans Detlef Sierck fled Germany in 1937. He was married to a Jewess. He was already established as one of Germany's leading film directors. Via neutral Europe he wended his way to Holywood where he changed his name to Douglas Sirk. He directed all manner of product but became best known for what were then regarded as schlocky melodramas, belittled as 'women's pictures'. Later criticism came to see the value of these films - fast-paced and touching on troublesome emotions - masterful product. Starring the estimable Barbara Stanwyck, All I Desire is a good example of his work. 69/70.  

Advent 14 Fiction

I am not an unbiased man but I feel the time has come for me to heap some grudging praise on an Old Edwardian. For those of you not of the cloistered world of the King Edward VI Foundation, an Old Edwardian is an alumnus of King Edward's School Birmingham, a private school of some standing. I am a lesser type of Edwardian (I say this with tongue firmly in cheek like a proper grammar school boy) that is to say an Aston Old Edwardian - state educated to the hilt!

Enough of such drivel and on with the praise. Gavin Lyall is the Old Edwardian in question and the particular novel in focus today is Shooting Script. I have read a few of Lyall's books and this is the best I have yet encountered. It has no pretensions to high literature but is fast-paced (I would say Chandleresque) and concise. Lyall's work attracted praise from the ultimate professional wordsmith P.G. Wodehouse. Praise does not come any higher. Try this for a slab of colour:

I'd cheerfully said I'd 'see' him up in the 24th floor bar, but I'd forgotten the lighting they went in for there: a small frosted-glass lamp parked in front of each drinker. Just enough light to make every woman look beautiful and every bar bill unreadable. A big hotel thinks of such things.