Pictures At An Exhibition

Apologies to Mussgorsky. Apologies to Emerson, Lake and Palmer (I suspect you have to be a certain age to get that allusion). Apologies to all serious art lovers. This year's Overgraduate Advent Calendar is going to be the OG's meander through an imaginary gallery of his favourite art. Actually that oversells it because there are always rules - there have to be rules. And they are these: no more than one image per artist and they have to be man-made pictures - no photography. That still leaves plenty of room for you to be stunned by OG's decidedly tired and depressingly middle-brow taste in art. I wish it was otherwise but I am a prisoner of my lack of effort when it comes to art. I love galleries but, as with books, such is the mass of stuff out there that a second-class (lower-second-class if we are being scrupulous) mind rather tends to give up the fight.

My paternal grandmother and my aunt were both substantially talented artists. My father was a talented and prolific amateur (to add to his other copious skills) and both of my daughters are blessed with the artistic gene that skipped their father - Daughter Number Two is an illustration graduate and demonstrably has an eye, as I believe they say in certain circles.

Eclectic, that is the word. All over the place might be a less generous summation of my taste. Anyway, enjoy.   

The Variegated Beauty Of Film

As you will have gathered I watch quite a lot of films and am not shy of giving an opinion on them. Most recently I was giving forth on the qualities of John Ford. Today's trio of movies come from very different bands of the filmic spectrum - one Ealing comedy, one rip-roaring swashbuckler, and one seminal Spaghetti Western. Variety is the spice of life.

Ealing comedy. I've reviewed this one before (Christmas 2016 to be precise) but Passport to Pimlico merits revisiting. I watched it with my mater a couple of weeks ago after we had enjoyed a very fine (Tyburn chippy) fish and chip luncheon - out of the paper you understand, OG's mama has standards even if he does not. Mum reckoned she hadn't seen this film since its cinematic run. It proved worth the wait. Funny, acute, and altogether charming with its repertory company of British comedic talent, it may perhaps be the very peak of Ealing's output. I repeat my 2016 rating - 80/100.

Next, a film of even greater vintage, 1938 to be precise. Rarely, if at all, has a swash been so thoroughly buckled as in The Adventures of Robin Hood. The history is, of course, entirely dodgy. No matter. There is no grey area between goodies and baddies. No matter. Sherwood Forest (reimagined on the Hollywood back-lot) is impossibly luminous. The stunts (and remember no CGI) are breathtaking and the whole thing speeds along at all times. Not an edge of cynicism to be found anywhere in this the first Warner Brothers picture to be filmed in Technicolor. If this can't raise a smile then you have no soul. 80/100. 

Finally we jump forward to 1964 and Fistful of Dollars. A very different kettle of fish. Cynicism drips from every pore of this movie. Eastwood is brilliantly sombre. Morricone's music is arresting. The violence is so stylised as to be worryingly amusing. This is clever and exploitative film-making. When this timbre falls into the wrong hands it can produce worthless pap. Sergio Leone is, though, a masterful director. Clever stuff. 78/100.   

 

The State Of Rugby Union

You may have noticed that I left the Rugby World Cup alone after my highly enjoyable trip to Marseille for its early stages. Here are a few of the Big Fat Pig's thoughts on where RWC has left us. In reaching these conclusions I also take account of some club rugby I have watched at my beloved Aston Old Edwardians and some Gallagher Premiership rugby courtesy of the good old telly box.

England progressed further and less humiliatingly than any of us might have wished given their dire form prior to RWC. Their rugby was turgid but lion-hearted. Marcus Smith must be given his head and Owen Farrell must be pensioned off with resounding thanks echoing in his ears. He has been a stalwart leader but he has never learned how to tackle efficiently - witness two embarrassing hand-offs aimed at his body in otherwise notable recent performances for Saracens.

The objective of the game is to score more points than your opponent. South Africa have a confrontational and muscular way of addressing this obective. No purpose is served in belly-aching about their success. Be better.

RWC lasted far too long and the seedings were settled laughably early. Groups of four would answer one point and a tad of common sense the other. Don't hold your breath.

We do not have a crisis in the laws of the game. We have a crisis of bad coaching. The methodology of modern tackiling best exemplifies this.

Grumpy Old Pig out.    

The State Of Our Union

Symbolic or what? My journey to Anglesey on Friday evening took the best part of six hours. A wicked combination of pot-holes, road works, chaotic driving (not by me you understand), and sheer bad luck. Symbolic of what? The state of the country that's what. Broken Britain. We have a government incapable of governing, a Loyal Opposition scared shitless of professing any plausible policies and, just to cap it all, David (now Lord) Cameron is back in the cabinet. Actually I don't mind the Cameron appointment - he does at least have gravitas and must have plenty of political energy left after doing basically sod-all in his time as Prime Minister. 

What have I done to deserve this? Mind you, could be worse - I could be American, a native of a great country that seems determined to waste all of its manifest advantages. Please surprise me.

I think I've got a wart developing on my finger. Bloody hell, I repeat - what have I done to deserve this?

And Goodbye To All That

Alongside this text will appear rather inadequte pictures (yes, taken on my antediluvian telephonic implement) of the two books I returned last week to the university library. Their subject matter (evident from their forbidding titles) will tell you where OG was felt to be lacking in his first submission of his doctoral thesis Shakespeare and Bagehot: a Study in Drama and Politics. 

Having now kicked over the traces of the opinions of my learned examiners, I am more than happy to concede that they had a point. So what is this all leading up to? Well, I will mention this just once (not entirely sure that I will keep this promise) but my formal studies are at an end. On October 11 2023 I received an email (no snail mail I'm afraid) addressed to 'Dr David Roberts'. It took me bloody years and no small amount of doubt and panic but I got there. No more examinations for Dr. Dave. 

About those two books. After I had consigned them to the returns bin, I instinctively turned left to go to the literature shelves to seek more obscure tomes for my studies, only to pull myself up short - I didn't know what next to read. The necessity had gone. There was a mild tinge of regret, followed by a knowing grin. It is over. I hope I never stop learning, but there are no more badges to be won. In 1978 I failed to do myself justice in my A Levels. I think I have now, and only now, atoned. To all who kept me going and put up with me, thank you. The Nobel laureate Bob Dylan sums up my state of mind best: 'I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now'.    

The Cavalry Trilogy

John Ford made monumental pictures - clever pun there from your correspondent, you know because Ford so often shot his films in Monument Valley. No? Oh well, a man's got to try.

Ford's alleged Cavalry Trilogy may very well have been regarded as nothing of the sort by this most reluctant of auteurs. He and his frequent star, John Wayne, have both been reconsidered by their critics in the decades since their artistic primes. Quite right too. Wayne, whatever one might make of his unpleasant politics (perhaps best judged from the laughable The Green Berets), remains a great presence on screen, monumental in fact. As for Ford, he is a major figure - how could one say anything different about the man responsible for both The Searchers and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance.

The three films that comprise the after-designated Cavalry Trilogy were made in 1948, 1949, and 1950 respectively. They share no common characters (though manifestly they share character types) but do all deal with the morality and mores of the U.S. Cavalry. These films are a sympathetic and mildly regretful take on the realities of Manifest Destiny. 

Fort Apache is the first and best of the three movies. For collectors of film trivia there is a rare appearance from the adult Shirley Temple, but more seriously there is a nicely nuanced conflict between Wayne's pragmatic cavalry officer and his martinet commanding officer, played by Henry Fonda. The ending is particularly good and foreshadows the conclusion that Ford would hammer home even more tellingly in Liberty Valance some fourteen years later. There is also perhaps a veiled condemnation of the flawed heroism of a difficult American icon, George Armstrong Custer, not that Custer is naned and not that Ford would be anything other than subtle when treading such ground. 70/100.

She Wore a Yellow Ribbon is the only clour film of the three. It is shot in fabulous Technicolor and won its sole Oscar for cinematography. Ravishing to look at but rather more sentimental than Fort Apache, it does nevertheless pick-up on the themes of battle-ravaged machismo that Wayne's features were best deployed in tracing. 68/100. 

Last of all comes Rio Grande. Again lighter in tone than Fort Apache, this might be described as a romantic Western with Maureen O'Hara warming-up nicely for her more famous stint alongside Wayne (again under Ford's direction) in 1952's The Quiet Man. Away from the romance and some comedy the questions of male stubbornness and unpremeditated heroism are never forgotten. 69/100.

That Ford could make three such films in as many years is telling. He may not have recognised himself as auteur but he was unquestionably  a master craftsman who wrung every ounce of filmic virtue from his cast and material.