Bullfighting

"At the first bullfight I ever went to I expected to be horrified and perhaps sickened by what I had been told would happen to the horses..... The killing of the horses in the ring was considered indefensible. I suppose from a modern moral point of view, that is, a Christian point of view, the whole bullfight is indefensible; there is certainly much cruelty, there is always danger, either sought or unlooked for, and there is always death."
Thus Ernest Hemingway opens his book "Death in the Afternoon", a book about how magnificent the "art" of bullfighting is.
In yesterday's Times Roger Lewis wrote an artcile with the title "I'm with Hemingway on the glory of bullfights", and a very fine piece it is too in its defence of what, to some of us who tend to sentimentalise the lives of animals, would consider indefensible. The ritual taunting of a wonderful angressive beast, the humiliation of it by weakening it to the point where it can no longer offer any defence; then the killing of it in, seemingly, such a barbarous way that surely no person with any feeling for animals would find acceptable.
Roger Lewis argues otherwise: that we sentimentalise animals; we wish to see them set free; we do not understand the history of the practice so cannot feel the ritualistic spiritual joy of the spectacle.
He goes further to argue that political correctness has taken over the Western world to such an extent that everything now "has to be cerebral, kept inside the head or on the computer screen like the violence in children's computer games. Politically correct persons want to obliterate or muzzle any evidence of the link between modern man and our urges to be bacchanalian. The bullfight is a massive threat to this."
I saw two bullfights years ago in Barcelona. The first had a famous matador (I think it may have been Antonio Ordonez); the second had no one of note. In the first the bull met an instant death when the sword was driven into his body; in the second the bull did not intsantly die and the man was booed. I don't know why I went the second time because the first horrified me so much. It was all so savage and bloody. Yet Lewis and Hemingway make good cases for its continuation not as a sport but as a ceremony, a sort of religious ceremony that elates rather than, as in my case, horrifies.
The best part of the spectacle is when the bull comes out into the ring: he's looking for someone to kill and, I have to say, I had a secret hope that he would be successful.
Now it's banned in Catalonia and I'm not sure that I approve: my instinct tells me one thing, Hemingway and Lewis another.

Persona

I watched half an hour of Ingmar Bergman's film "Persona" but couldn't take any more. Two women, one of whom does not say a word, the other who can't stop, meet in a hospital - one is a patient, the other a nurse. And they talk. Or, rather, the one talks. About her experiences with a lover who may become her husband. May because she has had an experience of another kind of love (or lust) on a beach with a couple of boys. Yes, boys. Not as in film notes about the film "young men"; no, she specifically says "boys". I thought this bordered on the unmentionable subject of peodophilia or, if not that quite, pornography.
Of course, they're partial to a bit of porn in art houses and film societies ( I once saw Hedy Lamarr naked in "Extase", needless to say in a film society). But you're not supposed to enjoy it, you're supposed to ponder it in the context of the story..... or something.
The thing is "Persona" is a rotten film. Yet it got five stars in The Radio Times and rave reviews in Rotten Tomatoes and David Thompson rates it highly, so does Pauline Kael if memory serves me right. So it must be me. I hated it from beginning to .... to half an hour into it.
Now I enjoyed Clint Eastward's "Mystic River" whioch I also saw recently (for the second time) and thought it a much better film: good story, terrifying in places, good dialogue, good acting.
If I were to say that in the film society I once joined I would have been shouted down - "moron", "Phillistine". You couldn't mention Eastwood in the same breath as Bergman; it would have been like comparing Old Mother Riley with Laurence Olivier.
Yesterday I went to see another film whose title begins with the same letter as "Persona". I am referring to "Predators". I enjoyed it. Mindless I suppose but you need something mindless after an Ingmar Bergman film. Something where characters move about and shoot things and swear and.... well, don't just talk, talk, talk.

Videos and Wine

Someone writing in The Telegraph recently said he thought the most frightening words in the world were "do you want to see my holiday videos?" O yes, very frightening; I've been frightened many times with that question and, like the writer, can never find an excuse for not doing so that would sound genuine.
This has brought to mind a short film called "Home Movies" by Robert Benchley. He used to make short films all of which were immensely funny. One of his can be seen on Youtube: it's of Benchley playing a detective and he explains (he loved giving stupid lectures) how to become a detective. At one stage in the exercise he gets a phsychiatrist to explain to him what the facial features of a criminal look like while an artist nearby draws on a sheet of paper these features. When finished Benchley looks seriously at it only to discover the drawing of the man facing him is none other than himself.
In "Home Movies" he has himself playing a husband who has made his own movies - they didn't have videos in those days (30's - 50's) - and enthusiastically gets a few people together to watch them in the lounge of his home. One couple, in the dark, start necking instantly; a neighbour goes straight off to sleep. The film consists of views from a train - walls mainly; groups at a party - someone drunk...... can't recall the details but it's, of course, the early example of holiday videos.
Pity Robert Benchley "shorts" are not shown anywhere any more: they're still a lot of fun. I used to see them occasionally in a film club, between Bunuel and Eisenstein sort of thing.
Yes, "Would you like to see my holiday videos?" is indeed frightening but not, I think, as frightening as "Would you like to taste my home-made wine?" Not by any stretch. You can always go home and scream after videos; after home-made wine you go home to be ill.

Efrem Zimbalist Jr

I often wondered who Efrim Zimbalist Sr was. Well, not often. Occasionally. Actually never until now when I saw "By Love Possessed" on TCM. It's not a very good film but it has a good story in there trying to get out. Or, rather, the bare bones of James Gould Cozzens' novel are evident all right, the trouble is that that is pretty well all there is - the bare bones.
Someone in Variety magazine wrote about the film: "James Gould Cozzens' thoughtful novel has been turned into a soap opera."
The novel is excellent. Cozzens had written an even better novel a few years before - "Guard of Honour" which won the Pullitzer Prise; "By Love Possessed" was nominated for it but didn't win.
In both books Cozzens looks at a group of people who, seemingly, are the epitomy of respectability but who, on closer examination, have deep-lying moral faults. The characters are drawn with exemplary care and all are treated with a sort of respect so that their actions, when not conforming to society's values, are sympathetically treated.
Cozzens was deeply conservative and his writing is quite unlike that of many of his contemporaries ( for whom he held a deep contempt - "if I were to read a sentence of John Steinbeck's I'd be sick" he said, or words to that effect). It is classy and, you feel, purportedly so.
I thought the film wasn't as bad as most critics say. It is a trifle corny; it is soap opera stuff though with more depth; it is glossy and sexless though love and sex is an important theme; it is a typical Hollywood treatment of a best selling novel. But there's something about I like. I like it's focus on the characters' flaws; I like the actors' determination to get to the core of the characters (John Sturgis directed). And yes, I even liked Efrem Zimbalist Jr up against stalwarts like Jason Robards Jr (I wonder who Jason Robards Sr was!), Thomas Mitchell and Lana Turner. He looked the part of the town lawyer who is perfect in everything he does until he has at the last to make a decision that is criminal. He acted it well. He held the whole thing together. In short he surprised me. I had always thought him pretty wooden ("Wait Until Dark", "77 Sunset Strip").
O yes, Efrem Zimbalist Sr. Well he was a world famous violinist.

Cards

A card or a wag or eccentric, what I would call "a character" - that's the sort of sportsman a writer in the Times says he likes to see. He's not much interested in golf as a game to watch but he would watch if John Daly was playing. Before the games Daly would down the pints and the whisky chasers and smoke heaps of fags..... Like the darts player, Jocky Wilson, who'd down the pints then the vodka (a whole bottle of it with a trace of coca cola to hide its lack of colour) and play a game.....
When I played rugby many moons ago for second and third rate teams there was always the bloke who turned up, fag in hand, looking as if he had just got out of bed after a heavy night's drinking: eyes half closed, belches coming from his pot belly, and an F on his lips ready for a four letter word if required. We used to have to wash our own kit and pay to play - no idea why. There were no showers. Just a field. Maybe sometimes you'd have to put the posts up before you could start the game. Iron posts on one occasion. Sometimes a referee would attend. Why they came I don't know because inevitably they'd be insulted throughout the game. No one ever got sent off - they wouldn't have dared with often a fast flowing river nearby!
There were many "cards" in the games I played in: one, the full-back, hadn't told his wife he played so he had to get someone to wash his kit. Probably his mother! Another was so unfit he couldn't get to the place where the scrum was being set and just stood and watched. I saw him at the end of a game breathing heavily but managing to smoke a fag at the same time.
Tony Ward was a card I believe. I was in a pub near the Cardiff Arms Park after an Irish/Wales international when in comes Tony Ward all dressed up in an evening suit with bow tie to match. He had come to meet up with his Irish pals who were there at the far end of the room. He had a few drinks with them and a laugh (Ireland had won). I mentioned this to a friend of mine who was well up on the ettiquette of after match behaviour who said "He shouldn't have been there. Very bad form. They won't like it, the Irish powers-that-be."
He was dropped for the next game. I never knew if the incident had anything to do with it. Fancy doing that to Ireland's great outside half. Except that they chose Ollie Campbell instead!

Parry

Ignoramus as I am, I've always believed until recently that the Parry who composed "Jerusalem" was one and the same man who had composed the hymn "Aberystwyth"; that Sir Charles Hubert Hastings Parry was the same guy as Joseph Parry.
Simon Heffer, writing in last Sunday's Telegraph, believes that Hubert Parry is a composer who has been much neglected not least by The Proms but that this year they have made amends to a degree by the inclusion of not just his "Jerusalem" - which they wouldn't dare leave out of every "last night" - but of other works of his like his Sinfonietta.
I clicked on "Spotify" and put his name in the slot and up came a whole page of his works (with "Jerusalem" at the top of course); I discovered that he is indeed as Heffer maintains a wonderful composer of, my words now, light, English music - not as light as Percy Grainger but lighter that Vaughan Williams (who was once a student of his and a great admirer too).
Joseph Parry, described on a website as Wales's greatest composer, did not, of course, write "Jerusalem" but he did compose two other popular works that have been sung in Wales, if not elsewhere, for over a century: the hymn "Aberystwyth" and the song "Myfanwy".
He is not on the Spotify list so I was unable to sample any of his other works in order to discover if he does qualify as "Wales's greatest composer" (not much competition really).
He led an interesting life from working in an iron mine in Merthyr Tydfil at the age of nine to emigrating with his family to the USA where he worked again in a mine; from learning music to becoming a composer; from relative obscurity to become Professor of music at Aberystwyth University.
A few matters of some interest about these composers: Jack Jones's famous novel "Off to Philadelphia in the Morning" was a "life" of Joseph Parry; neither of the composers is mentioned in my three inch wide copy of Hutchinson's Encyclopedia.
According to Heffer, George Bernard Shaw was "afraid to meet him in case he was spellbound by Parry's personality". I find that hard to believe. I feel Shaw's reluctance may have had something to do with his work as a music critic; when he reviewed Elgar's "Enigma Variations" he wrote "English music has arrived at last". The "Enigma" came two years after Parry's Symphonic Variations about which Heffer writes "it is the finest work written by an Englishman in the 19th Century".
Mmmm!

Soccer

I don't dislike soccer as much as Simon Heffer who "loathes" it. I have the feeling that what he means is that he loathes everything around soccer: the wags, the lifestyles of footballers, the maniacal followers who brawl as much as support teams etc. I loathe all that too. But I can't say I dislike the game itself though I have not watched much of the World Cup (and glad it's coming to an end not least because of the noise of those dreadful, unmusical horns). What I have watched, however, I've found pretty tedious stuff. One of the football journalists, Matthew Norman, wrote that it was the worst world cup tournament he had ever experienced - and he'd seen quite a few.
Sports have been invented to play and watching other people play them can be entertaining but usually only if they have reached a certain high standard; the odd thing about this world cup is that the players are at the height of their playing careers but do not entertain very much. Maybe one of the problems is that they are all so good they cancel each other out: they depend more on defence than attack.
I was surprised to discover how much soccer is played in America and how much it was watched there on TV. Probably because their team did so well was the reason that 20 million people watched the last game their team played; yet it's a popular game there especially with youngsters.
I played it as a pupil at a grammer school many moons ago. We were not allowed to play rugby until the age of about fourteen; before that we played soccer. In most private schools rugby was the game played, never soccer. A.J.Ayer, the philosopher and soccer fan, reasoned that this was because they could get thirty boys on the field instead of twenty two.
Good reasoning Prof!

The Horse Soldiers

David Thomson in his "Biographical Dictionary of Film" does a hatchet job on John Ford and only mentions "The Horse Soldiers" in passing. He accuses him of lying about America's history and of sentimentalising characters especially old drunks. It's a blistering attack that you have to say has a lot of truth in it. But he mentions the lines of troopers marching or riding horses against the sky line in a disparaging way.
This is how "The Horse Soldiers" begins: a long line of soldiers on horseback riding along a long ridge against, yes, rippling clouds in an orange sky...... Wonderful. It may be a lie in that soldiers don't do that sort of thing but I like to think that they sometimes do. And then, of course, to add to the "colour" of the scene you get the song. Of course soldiers don't sing so well as this if they sing in unison at all, but it's a great pleasure to see this and hear this hoping that they might have. Ford used heaps of songs in his films, most of them favourites with the public and always lovely to hear. Here he has a sort of marching love song: "I left my love a letter in the hollar of a tree/ I told her I was off to join the US cavalry".
There is much brutality in this film and it's not untrue to say, with David Thomson, that Ford seems to relish it. But the main character played by John Wayne, though he enjoys a fight, is basically a kind soul who is wholly devastated by the senseless killing and destruction. There's a wonderful scene in which he is so upset with the way his soldiers and the enemy have died that he gets almost leglessly drunk, kicks a fellow colonel out of the bar for glorifying in it all, yanks a yippeeing soldier off a horse that has come into the bar and throws him out. Then.... you know it's coming - there a pyramid of glasses standing at the end of the counter and what does he do to them? The same thing Fred Astaire did at the end of his song, "One for my Baby and one more for the road" in an early film: he smashes them to smithereens.
Probably it's all lies. Probably there never were pyramids of glasses on the counters. But don't you wish there were?
How on earth does the film reviewer in The Radio Times give "The Horse Soldiers" only three stars? The opening scene, before the titles is worth 4. The rest is worth all of 5.