Two films

David Hare's "play" on TV last night was advertised as a play but was really a film. He had written a piece in The Times about why the one-off play should be resurrected on television and, to start things off, he had re-written his stage play, "The Zinc Bed", for TV. But in essence it remained a play since the same hightened (unrealistic) dialogue had been used. However, scenes had been split so that filmed, outdoor sequences could be shown, a device that does nothing but make the whole enterprise false in two ways: it is no longer the play it was, yet it is not a film either.
When people talk of "the TV play" they probably refer back to a time when plays were acted in one go, so to speak; like a stage performance there was no cutting but the production was done there and then - actors had to learn the whole play not, like a film, learn bits and have them put into a proper sequence by an editor.
Thus, David Hare's play, which may have been successful on stage, was a disaster on TV.
They don't do plays on TV any more; all so-called "plays" are filmed. So the medium becomes a visual one rather than a theatrical one.
The other film I saw yesterday was "Gone, Baby, Gone", almost a masterpiece - certainly in comparision with the botched up affair that was Hare's work. The whole thing smacked of authenticity in the depiction of the characters and the setting. While Hare's characters were wooden, doll-like caricatures, those in this film were rawly real.
David Hare was making quite out-dated political points while "Gone, Baby, Gone" had nothing to say that was political but a lot to say that told you something about "the human condition".

Vaughan Williams

Stephen Pollard in yesterday's Times wrote about Vaughan Williams that he was the last of the great composers in this country. That when he died, classical music died too.
A bit of an exaggeration perhaps but it has a truth in it; the so-called classical music now being composed appeals only to certain academic types who have followed a different line in composition - that of Berg, Schonberg and their followers. Composers who wrote the sort of music the public might have enjoyed were, sort of, elbowed out of performance venues.
I'm afraid it's true of art in general these days: poets write for other poets, artists produce works that have little interest for ordinary folk etc.
But there seems to be a sort of campaign to bring Vaughan Williams to prominence now; Simon Heffer in The Telegraph writes about him being Britain's greatest composer; Pollard thinks he is the quintessential English composer, and so on.
I think he is a good second-rater with a few compositions under his belt that have passed the test of time. But a lengthy period of lisrening to his music I find is hard going. The Prom tonight is all Vaughan Williams. I'm afraid I would find it rather too much of the same thing, maybe boring. For as Thomas Beecham remarked in that acerbic tongue that often summed up his views on something such, that for all its nastiness and spitefullness, there was usually an element of truth in it, "he once wrote a rather good piece with a Thomas Tallis theme, but after that he seemed to write the same piece over and over again."
The grain of truth here is "yes, there is much about his music that has a sort of sameness about it, as if he is often searching for a tune and only finding one when he uses a traditional folk tune e.g. 'The Lark Ascending'."

Monsters' Favourites

I read somewhere that Hitler's favourite film was "Lives of the Bengal Lancers". He'd watch it over and over. It starred Gary Cooper. But there, Hitler was a great admirer of Britain and the British because, well, hadn't they created a vast empire?
It's not a very good film though it is in a superior category of favourites to one of Stalin's. He was apparently very fond of George Formby films.
Now, if you've ever seen one of Formby's films you'll realise how low Stalin's taste must have been - they are all, without exception, dreadful (though they do have some good songs in them).
Makes you wonder about the great monsters of the last century and their odd taste in films.
Makes me wonder what sort of films Mao Tse Tung liked. Since he had more people killed than the other two put together then probably his taste in films would have been lower even than theirs. My guess is The Three Stooges.

Poetry

Joe Joseph, writing in The Times, says there's not much poetry read these days; that what is written could be put into a very small anthology, whereas novels, well there's thouands of them written and your shelves at home might well be in danger of falling with all those books piled on them.
Well there is, actually, a good deal of poetry written but not many people read it. Other poets do. Reviewers of poetry collections do. Not the general public.
Much of it, of course, is not easy to understand. One big criticism of modern poetry is that it does not readily engage itself with the general public. There's not much of it that is quotable; it's not easy to remember; and there is not that directly accessible "thought" that makes one feel that something important is being said.
Some of it is too much like prose: you wonder sometimes why the writer has put it into lines because it can be read like prose.
And rhymes are not liked much.
Rhyming is very difficult. When it's bad it often means it has been forced - i.e. the writer is looking for a suitable rhyme instead of following the track of his thoughts.
I'm afraid that most so-called "high art" these days is so high, so far advanced in form from what it once was that it has gotten to be enjoyed by very few: music, poetry, art - all have lost touch with the public. It's a bit like Mathematics, once understood by many but now so difficult it has become only of academic interest, understood by few.
Mathematics will stay like that but there's no reason that poetry should.

The Droning Beetle

No one I know of my generation recalls a certain beetle that used to fly at night. I don't know what the beetle is called but I know it was big and it flew in a straight line and it made a loud buzzing or droning sound. Sometimes it would fly quite close to one's head and it was, as a kid, quite disconcerting if not alarming. I had the feeling that it was not going to divert from its straight line of flight and that if my head happened to be in the way, it wouldn't worry too much about it.
My wife does not recall ever seeing (I never saw one either, just heard them) or hearing one of those beetles. I told her I wasn't making it up and that it's mentioined in a famous poem.... whose title I couldn't recall.
Then, today, on The Daily Express website which has a "Forgotten Poem" section I came across it: Gray's "Elegy written in a country churchyard". Of course: one of my favourite poems.

"The curfew tolls the knell of parting day,
The lowing herd winds slowly o'er the lea,
The plow-man homeward plods his weary way,
And leaves the world to darkness and to me.

Now fades the glimmering lndscape on the sight,
And all the air a solemn stillness holds,
Save where the beetle wheels his droning flight,
And drowsy tinklings lull the distant folds....."

Two novels

Two remarkable novels have stayed in my mind for many years; they are both Russian. They areDostoievski's "The Possessed" and Tolstoy's "Resurrection".
The first is not one of the most popular of Dostoievski's and the second, likewise, is not Tolstoy's most popular work.
But there is something about the first that brought Russia of that period before the revolution vividly to life; and there is in the second something of the great novelist struggling with his moral problems.
"The Possessed" has been translated since my first reading of it a few times and each time its name is changed: "The Devils" is one. But I have never taken to translations of both these books other that those by Constance Garnett.
One get used to her style I suppose. Maybe the other versions are truer to the original text, maybe they have a greater style in themselves.... Maybe a lot of things but it's Garnett's version that I like most.
I once saw a stage version of "The Possessed" by Albert Camus. At the Mermaid Theatre, London. It was a wonderful evening. Believe it or not Kenneth Griffiths, famed for his "stupid Welshmen", was superb in the part of an anarchist.
I think "Resurrection" has been made into a film but it is not much liked I believe: Tolstoy tackling a theme of moral remorse and not pulling it off because he was too much in thrall to a certain religious code of behaviour.
P.S. Later, after his great success at The Mermaid, I heard Kenneth Griffith as "Hamlet" on radio and believe it was the worst performance I have ever heard by someone playing that part.

Titles

These days, getting older - or, rather, getting old - I am greeted in all sorts of ways; I am hardly ever called "sir". Not that I want to be. I have always felt that being referred to that way makes me want to say "O no, I'm not that important."
But sometimes it is a title that is gratefully accepted. For example, if I am buying something expensive than I feel I deserve some respect so I then accept "sir" as their gratitude to me for buying the commodity from them.
However, I sometimes feel that what people call me is said in order to make me feel that I am not really worthy of that much respect. "Squire" for example. I regard this as almost verbally abusive since I am not a squire and they know it. Maybe it's said to demean me in some way!
Recently I have been called "Lovely" and, more endearingly I suppose, "My lovely" by women serving me coffee. Which makes me feel old. Which I am. But I don't want it to be so obvious to all and sundry.
One term I really object to is "Young man".
Recently I took a taxi with a driver who felt the country was going to the dogs, that there were too many foreigners here.... You know the type. When I paid him he said "Thank you, young man."
Again, a fishmonger at a supermarket, after serving me with a halibut steak said "There you go then, young man."
I do not like it. Perhaps I am being too sensitive but it makes me think that these two guys think me not worthy of being treated as an adult, that because I'm getting on in years then that does not automatically put me in a priveleged position; that they can get away with a wry, joking phrase which puts me down while making me believe there's some affection there.
The fish, by the way, was inedible. And the taxi driver was a bore.

Dannie Abse

Now 85 years of age and still writing, Dannie Abse, the well known Cardiff poet is keeping fit and well - so an article on him in the "Body and Soul" section of Saturday's Times newspaper says.
I once met him. It was at a launch of a book of poems I had been invited to. The book was called "Twelve Modern Anglo-Welsh Poets" and Abse was included with 12 of his own poems.
It was an entertaining evening with some of the poets reading favourite works of their own and wine galore for everyone.
Someone said to me "There's Dannie Abse." He was chatting to a few people across the room. I went over and said to him "Mr Abse: I saw a play of yours in London recently." It was a play performed above a pub - a fringe play, a one-acter, few cast. I continued: "I thoroughly enjoyed it." Which I truthfully had.
"That is the worst production of one of my plays ever. Ever!"
I sheepishly returned to my glass of wine.

Clive James

What is it about Clive James that makes him at one and the same time likeable and rather tiresome? He is, of course, not only brilliant in everything he does but, what is more, he does everything. His versatility is extraordinary: essays, criticisms, novels, biographical sketches, poetry.....
Well, as to poetry I don't think the word "brilliant" comes readily to mind. Of one of his poems I think it was a poetry professor at Oxford who remarked: "Is this the worst poem ever written?"
I once wrote to Clive James about a piece he had written on the TV play "How Green was my Valley". He had given the production a good review. I compared it to the John Ford film version of it. He kindly wrote back to me thanking me for my letter but saying that he had less reverence for John Ford than I evidently did.
That told me something about him. I thought it showed a defect in his critical powers. Here was a very ordinary TV production and there was Ford's great film - with all its faults!
I feel there is in Clive James's work a lightness of touch that is given the impression of being deep by an ability with words to blind the reader to its superficiality.
Yet he was very influencial and was taken seriously by artists - actors, producers etc. - when he wrote television reviews for The Observer thirty or so years ago.
I recall meeting a member of a satirical group of performers who were quite well known many years back; I said to him: "your television show seems to be doing well." He said: "Actually we are waiting to see what Clive James thinks of it in his Sunday column."
They had a long wait. He never mentioned them. A couple of years went by and they disbanded.
Maybe they weren't good enough for him to bother with. And maybe they were too good for him to bother with.

Drugs

In an article in The Spectator last week Alan Massie wrote about Malcolm Lowry, the novelist. Lowry was a drunk; he wrote a few novels, most well received, one in particular regarded as a masterpiece - "Under the Volcano". Massie wrote "Drunk, he nevertheless noticed and took in and would later make use of things that the sensible and sober never so much as glimpse."
On "Desert Island Discs" last week A.C.Grayling, the philosopher, said he had never taken drugs or was a drinker of alcohol because he wanted his mind to be clear always, he did not want drugs to interfere with the logic of his thoughts.
Aldous Huxley would have not approved of Grayling's view; Huxley took drugs to enhance his capacity to think, maybe to open windows to ideas that sober people simply do not, can not, imagine.
Who is right?
Both probably. After all, Lowry and Huxley were writers of fiction - artists. Grayling is a down-to-earth philosopher who wants to see the world as it is, not as it might be.

Translations

"The atmosphere of Torre di Venere remains unpleasant in the memory. From the first moment the air of the place made us uneasy, we felt irritable, on edge; then at the end came the shocking business of Cipolla, that dreadful being who seemed to incorporate, in so fateful and so humanly impressive a way, all the peculiar evilness of the situation as a whole."
Pure Thomas Mann.
But it isn't "pure" Thomas Mann; it's a translation from the German of one of his stories ("Mario and the Magician").
I am reminded of this matter of translation of literature by comments Michael Gove made in The Times yesterday. "I've always harboured the thought," he wrote, "that reading great literature in translation involves a lot of nuance, a sacrifice of subtlety, which few will admit to."
Well I won't admit to it in the case of the works of Thomas Mann because the only versions I have of his books are those translated by H.T.Lowe-Porter. And to my mind she is perfect. I can't tell if her translation is good but I do know that she has always made Mann a major literary artist to me.
I once had a part-time job reading scripts for the BBC. I would read a play by someone who had sent it in on spec, write comments about it and get a small fee (a couple of pounds) for the work.
I got fed up with it. Eventually I sent in a written comment that I had written in what I supposed Thomas Mann' style was - or maybe H.T.Lowe-Porter's.
I never received another script to read after that.

Reviewing

A friend of mine who taught theatre studies at a college was very good at putting plays on stage but had no idea how to review a play. I once saw an example of his reviewing technique - or, rather, lack of it - when he reviewed a play for a local paper. He wrote about how the techniques the producer had used were not those that should have been used, he used technical language to describe what was going on behind the scenes. And so on.
In short, he did not see the play but saw the things that made the play stageable.
At a conference of producers of plays for young people I objected to the way that theatre critics were regarded: it was being suggested that critics were out of touch with what producers were attempting to do and had no knowledge of the machinery which was in place to activate the enterprise of putting on a play. So I made a defence of the theatre critic, being myself one at the time.
I was then asked if I knew anything about the workings of local theatres, what went on behind the scenes and so on. I said I did not and had to admit then that I was lacking in this regard.
I was wrong to make that, sort of, apologetic admission. What I should have said is that the theatre critic is, or should be, a person who is a member of the audience, that he needs to know nothing about how the play is constructed or how it is produced; he sees the final result just like any member of the audience does; what goes on other than that which is visible to him where he sits is of no consequence to him.
After that he goes away and writes about what his feelings were about what he had seen and heard.

Church

A.C.Grayling, the philosopher, though an atheist, said on Desert Island Discs today that he likes to listen to church music. I do too.
One Sunday I said to my wife "let's go to Llandaff Cathedral, I haven't seen the Epstein 'Christ in Majesty' for years". So off we went, saw the magnificent statue and then sat down for a rest.
But just then the afternoon service began so, politely, we waited there until it was over.
It was wonderful. The choir was superb, the readings beautifully executed and, of course, the music overall was magnificent.
My wife and I met a couple, man and wife, retired long since who, when we got to chatting told us that he had been an actuary while she had worked some time back for the BBC in the children's department. Those were the days of radio only.
She said she had worked with "Uncle Mac", popular many, many years ago.
She loved music and sang in a church choir.
One evening at dinner, after a few too many glasses of wine, she admitted to not being very religious (which I interpreted as not being religious at all) and that she would probably not attend church at all "if it wasn't for the music."
There is something very comforting about attending church services, especially Church of England services: the readings from the bible - the old one! - the sermons intelligently argued and of course, the wonderful music.

Scientists and Artists

A friend of mine, a lapsed Catholic who became very left wing if not actually a communist, when I mentioned Solzhenitsin and his troubles with the Russian powers-that-be some years ago, said "Well Solzhenitsin is only a physicist."
That, sort of, absolved him from being considered a serious artist. Or serious anything. So "physicist" becomes a term of abuse. The fact that I myself had once taught physics seemed to escape my friend.
Another scientist who became famous (as a composer) was Borodin. I remember watching the programme "Who wants to be a millionaire?" and a competitor got to the last question for 1 million pounds but he couldn't answer it. I could. "What was the occupation of Borodin?" Four options. One was "chemist". That was it. I might have won a million. The trouble was that that was about the only question I could answer.

The Second Bomb

John Pilger is at it again: if the Serb Karadik is to be put on trial for mass muder then why not Bush, Blair and company too? To which most people would answer "well, yes, I suppose there is a case to answer in the sense that in any and every war people are killed usually in large numbers." But what you have to ask yourself is: "are these wars justified?" and, of course, some will say "yes" and others will say "no".
Making the case for and against is a civilised and sane practice. Or should be. In Pilger's case he tries to appear cool, calm and collected but actually he is anything but.
And he is still ranting on about the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, maintaining that Japan was ready to negotiate a peace deal and that the dropping of the bombs was unnecessary.
Most commentators and historians reject this idea. The evidence is that Japan, especially the military, was in no mood to deal, but to fight to the last.
The dreadful dropping of the bombs was an act so barbarous that it is almost unbelieveable that someone could order it to be done in the 20th Century. But if a case can be made for its use I feel that Pilger might have been on firmer ground if he had concentrated more on the question of why the second bomb on Nagasaki was dropped. That seems to me inexcusable.

The Truth

I have just read a short story in The New Yorker. A fairly young couple are preparing a dinner party for two friends, a man and wife. But though they are friends of the wife who is giving the dinner, her husband hates them. In the course of the story he gets his hate off his chest, especially since the "friends" did not actually arrive, but his wife is appalled at his behaviour is obviously ready to leave him.
It took me back to a scene in a restaurant in London years ago.
I was there with two friends on the evening after a rugby match at Twickenham we had attended. We ordered our meals and proceeded to eat them quielty, not saying very much.
On the next table were two men and two women. They had evidently had quite a lot to drink. They were middle class/respectable so to speak. Not the sort who make a noise or kick up a fuss.
Except that something must have been said to cause one of the women to turn on her husband and tell him what she thought of him.
But she didn't do it so that only he could hear her; she did so that everyone could hear her. She didn't shout but spoke in a calm, sensible-sounding voice as one would, perhaps, speak to a servant.
In about twenty minutes she told him he was useless, a bore, that he never did anything to help her, that he was beneath contempt - and so on and so on.
It was a performance of a woman in a play by Noel Coward but who resembled more someone in a play by Samuel Beckett.
I cannot believe that that marriage survived that evening. I'll never know.
They say "the truth will out". That evening, while we ate our meals at the next table, a drama of gigantic proportion was taking place at the next table - but all on a civilised level.... one can't help thinking "on a civilised English" level.

Hard luck stories

There was a discussion on Saturday evening on TV before a performance of Max Bruch's Violin Concerto in which it was said that the composer sold the copywright of the concerto for some ready money, not imagining the concerto would receive more than a few performances, only to discover that it was so popular it was played and played and played, Bruch not receiving a penny for the performances.
Hard luck Max Bruch.
Hard luck too on Sibelius who wrote "Valse Triste" when a young man to find that, after he had sold the copywright, the piece became incredibly popular. On the money he could have received for it he could have retired early.
Frederick E. West is best known for a novel he wrote called "633 Squadron". He gave a talk about his work in Newport some years ago which I attended when he said how he had sold the copywright or maybe that his hold over the book was not recognised in the states - something happened anyway that elicited his receiving no payment from the very popular film of the same name.
Hard luck Frederick E. West.
One of Hitchcock's less well known films, "The Trouble with Harry", Shirley Maclean's first film (and good she was too) was based on a novel by Jack Trevor Storey. The author got nothing for it. He tried but failed. He complained about it in print a lot but it was just another hard luck story. Or in his case, a hard luck Jack Trevor Storey.

Male and Female Sides

Melissa Kite, in this week's Spectator says she and her boy friend have just split up and she's so desperate she feels like doing things which might release the tenseness in her - like killing herself. Then she says she's going to explore her male side and do things like squeezing the toothpast tube at the middle.
So that's a male thing? Well, I must have a female side because I don't think I have ever done that; I have always squeezed from the bottom.
But if I have a female side it doesn't come into effect when I am writing plays, according to a once close friend who was, some time back, a quite famous actress in Rep. She told me: "You can't write for women."
Actually I think I can. One of my most successful plays, "Dreamjobs", is an all woman - or, rather, all girl - cast. Each character is quite distinctly delineated I think; I have never had feed-back on it to the effect that "I don't know anyone like those characters". No, it's been all good things said.
Where she has a point, I believe, is when I write a play that has women as well as men in it. We started to write a play together about 15 years ago and as soon as she read what I had written in Act 1 she said: "The wife is not right."
"What's wrong with her?" I asked.
"She's too miserable. That's all she does is moan."
I tried to happy her up a bit, failed and we abandoned the project.
But, thinking about it, have you ever heard "The Archers"? All the women on that series are miserable as hell. And "East Enders"? They're either moaning miserably or bonking. Or both!