Mozart and Hawkes

On the surface there's not much similarity between the work of Mozart and that of the film director Howard Hawkes except that they were both great in their own fields; but look a little closer and you'll find some things that make you think "Ah yes, they do resemble each other a lot".
They both created works that are very popular still: a lot of Mozart's music doesn't seem to fade with age; neither do some of Hawkes's films. Neither are artists in the romantic sense: people who practice their arts without caring what the general public thought of it. They were both in a sense "jobbing" artists, Mozart getting commissions where he could find them and working within the system of patronage essential for him to be able to earn a living for him and his family and Hawkes working within the Hollywood system of film moguls (like princes) controlling the way the films were produced, what was produced and what sort they were.
I don't think either was political. Hawkes had a disdain for progressive ideas and Mozart probably didn't have time to worry himself with what was going on in the wider world - "Mozart spent almost his entire life locked in the old feudal order, at the beck and call of princes, bishops, emperors and aristocratic patrons who treated him with disdain, amused or otherwise" (Richard Morrison in The Times this week).
Again, "Mozart learned voraciously from others" but adapted what he learned to his own style of composition. Hawkes had no definable style and used the studio style to the best advantage.
Mozart composed operas, religious music, concertos, symphonies etc. Hawkes did Westerns, Musicals. gangster films ("Scarface") etc. They both turned their hands to whatever was available and then did their own thing with it - a lot of the sparkling dialogue in Hawkes's films was written by him.
Jean-Luc Godard said of Howard Hawkes: "He is the greatest of all American artists". Many have said of Mozart something similar, the greatest composer of all time. Both resisted intellectual pretension, Hawkes claiming his approach was pure instinct: "Just one question: do you like it or don't you?" Mozart had not time to swim in pretensious waters, he was too busy, like Fred Asdtaire said, "making a buck".

Lucerne

We drove into Lucerne many years ago in my Peugeot car that had seen better days. I stopped at a garage where there were men in blue overalls, the mechanics, and men in white overalls, the managers. I asked them if they would fix my car and a man in white said "bring it here at 7.30 in the morning please," perfect English but spoken like a man who had been trained by the SS. We did so and we picked it up in the afternoon; it was not only running like dream now but it had been cleaned, the engine too.
The place had a German feel to it. Everything worked: the doorknobs worked, the doors didn't squeak etc.
At that time, June or July I think, the Lucerne Music Festival was on with Herbert von Karajan and the Berlin Phil. if memory serves me right. I went to the box office and asked for two tickets for "tonight's concert". I was met by a young woman's face which had gone sort of blank. She seemed speechless. She just shook her head. In retrospect I believe I might have got a ticket if I had booked a couple of years before.
We left Lucerne, a lovely town, and crossed the Alps into the southern part of Switzerland, the Italian part. There, we went to a cafe to have a drink and maybe something to eat. It was not the sort of cafe we had seen in the German part of Switzerland. It was rather dingy and fly-blown. Then an argument began, I don't know about what; it started quite sociably, the two men smiling but suddenly it got violent and almost came to blows. Then it was over and everything returned to normal.
It is not racialist to say that there are vast differences between Italians and Germans; they differ in temperament, way of life, behaviour, manner etc. Fred Zinnemann, on Desert Island Discs said that if there is a bumping of cars, an English man will wish to exchange insurance policy addresses; a Frenchman will want to fight but an Italian will try to kill you.
But when Professor Hoggart was once asked where he'd like to live other than England he immediately said "O Italy. My young family loved every minute of it there." Then he added: "In Italy no one pays taxes."

Liking and Making

Some of the best sports' commentators are people who have themselves played games to a high standard. This does not necessarilly mean that they know more about looking intelligently at games than the spectator; indeed, it might mean that they know less because, while they have been in the mill of the game, or often in the maul of the game, they can hardly say that they have seen it from a perspective that is objective. In some cases they have seen it from a certain fixed angle: take a front row forward who is engaged in the hard graft of mauling and shoving and, often, brawling rather than watching the finer points from the touchline. Also, having been a player does not nesessarilly mean that you will be able to write better than the watchful spectator, one trained in journalism perhaps or one with a flair for the apt, maybe also, the well formed poetic phrase.
I once attended a conference on film study. Present were people from film study courses in colleges and writers of articles on film in certain magazines like "Sight and Sound". The aim of the conference was to project the idea that film should be studied in schools at GCSE level and above. Someone thought that it might be useful if part of the course was devoted to the making of films as well as their study. This idea was instantly denounced as decidely unhelpful: this was meant to be a study of film as an art form not the teaching of a craft. When I supported the man who had suggested the idea I too was denounced as a sort of charlatan. Wasn't I aware that English Literature was studied and that there was no part in that study for creative writing? I didn't know that because at that time I was a teacher of science.
So I thought they must be right and we two outcasts quite wrong.
Liking literature has nothing to do with making it. Liking painting has nothing to do with making it.
But doesn't the act of making something involve the artist in a critically creative task in which his/her mental processers are active in analytical decisions as well as mechanical ones like laying on the brushstrokes.
A man from the Ministry of Education (I think) came to the conference to listen and then to give his view (which became a decision). I have scarcely heard such a superb demolition of the arguments put forward to him by this group of ardent film lovers. He fairly squashed them into nothingness. It was beautiful performance, almost a work of art in itself.
What his argument amounted was really quite simple: could you expect the general public to let their children attend a school which spent a good deal of time watching films with John Wayne in them?
Though I knew a man who was a university lecturer who, at a morning's staff meeting, heard the film study lecturer give his reason for wearing a black tie that day: in respect for the memory of John Wayne who had died the day before.

Public Speaking

Not an easy thing to do; you're either good at it or not. Yet there are clubs you can join where you can larn how to do it. So I have been told. You wouldn't see me there for love nor money. Can't say I have any desire to speak in public anyway; I have done it occasionally for family affairs but then you don't have to do it expecting to be good at it; you do it so that freinds and family know that you care - about whatever the get-together is for.
I met a pathologist at one of our weekend writing courses. The first time he came he said he wanted to learn to write like Bernard Levin. The next time he came he said he didn't want to write articles any more; he wanted now to learn how to be a public speaker. There was no way we could advise him on that so we just listened to his efforts and said what we thought about his technique. When he came the third time he had been attending, he said, a public-speaking course. I couldn't see any improvement. In fact, to be honest - I didn't tell him this - I sensed a decline in his ability. He had, I think, been forced to follow a set of rules which, of course, led him along a path towards sameness; he now lacked a certain individuality; it wasn't him being natural but him being ordinary.
Toby Young, writing in The Spectator last week, tells of his experiences as a public speaker. At weddings and at certain functions that had to do with setting up one's own school (which he is now doing). He said that when he tried to make his speeches funny, they were always disastrous. He'd tell a joke which would go down like a lead balloon. Then he'd try a dirty joke with F's in it. Equally disastrous. Or worse - silence.
I knew a bloke who was quite a good actor, amateur variety. He was a very big bore, off stage. In short, when he was being himself he was boring; when he was playing someone else he was that person and was entertaining. He had also joined a public-speaking course. Disastrous. He was a bigger bore than he was naturally.
Public speaking is an art not a craft: you can learn a craft but an art is something that comes out of your own personality and experience. Don't ask what that something is please because I don't know.

Riots

Someone writing in The Times felt sorry for those students who were peacefully demonstrating against inflated fees for colleges in that they might have suffered at the hands, or rather the truncheons, of the police, because finding themselves in a surging crowd at the front of the rioters they were the most vulnerable to attack. I too feel sorry for them; I myself have found myself thrust forward in a sudden surge to find myself in the front line, as it were. This wasn't a riot but a demonstration of affection bordering on fanatiicism. Strolling in London near the Cafe Royal (?) I was aware of a lot of people also strolling aimlessly around. But they had a purpose in being there. I didn't. I was just strolling "between pubs" so to speak. Suddenly a limo arrived at the entrance to the night club and out stepped Marlene Dietrich. Having not the least interest in seeing her I nontheless was presented with a grandstand view of her; up against a police cordon with arms linked to prevent her admirers getting close to her, there I was a couple of inches away from her as she strode by ignoring all those admirers/fanatics shouting "Marlene, Marlene" in strained. agonised tones. They couldn't get close enough to her to ogle and, maybe, touch her too. I could have touched her if it wasn't for the fact that my arms were by my sides and my body was thrust against a couple of big coppers in front of me and against a crowd of fans behind me pushing hard to get to her.
One of the "rioters" in the college fees affair in London, a harmless fellow it seems who had been, like myself, pushed to the front, had been hit over the head by a truncheon; he had a large bloody gash in his skull. We see people in riots on TV and we see truncheons being used and think of them as rods of wood. They may be wood but they are the hardest of woods. As a schoolboy I had a neighbour whose father was a policeman; one day his son, my friend, showed me his father's truncheon. I held it and could not believe how solid and hard it was. I felt that you could kill someone with it. I've never forgotten the feel of it. Nor, I suppose, will that seemingly innocent student whose head was battered when he found himaself in the front of a rioting mob.

The Apprentice

Lord Sugar showed us his true nature last night in "The Apprentice": an East London stall-holder with a bullying manner and a penchant for blaming other people for his mistakes. I suppose many people watching the programme over the last few months were hoping that someone would give Stuart "The Brand" Maggs his well deserved "come-uppance". Well, last night they'd have been pleased because he got it in spades. First from the rottweiller-like interviewers who grilled him like coppers in B pictures of fifty years ago; the only thing missing was the table lamp shining in his face. Then from Lord Love-a-Duck Sugar who went at him full fruit-seller throttle. Baggs was, to put it succinctly and crudely, equivalent to a bucket of shit. It was a disgusting performance.
It was also unfair to the young man. The week before, Sugar had fired a very sweet young woman, Liz, instead of Baggs. Now, it was evident he was regretting having done so. But instead of admitting to it being his own fault, he went at Baggs blaming him for the dismissal. That was not only unfair but it was ungentlemanly and crass to say the least.
Lord Sugar, everyone had begun to think, was gradually evolving a more relaxed and engaging personality: he actually smiled a few times in the past few weeks, but now under that veneer of almost-charm came, like the Alien from John Hurt's abdomen, a creature that seemed to tell us a truth about the "noble" personage: that he had got where he'd got by a bullying ruthlessness and penchant for blaming others for his mistakes.
Chris, one of the two finalists in The Apprentice created a new cliched metaphore last week when he referred to a spat (almost a fist fight with F's flying around the place) between he and The Brand; he said "it was nothing really, just Handbags at Dawn, that was all". He should win. Why? He's creative, that's why. But he won't: he's got a degree and once studied A level Theology - and passed - while not believing a word of it. Sugar doesn't like people like that. And he's a bit posh too.

Hammond

When I was a kid the name of Wally Hammond sent a thrill through me. Of course, I hadn't seen him on television because that had not then been invented, nor had I seen him in person because I did not then have an interest in Glamorgan cricket; my interest was only in hearing about him from radio commentaries. He had a reputation for displays of brilliance at times when his team were in the depths of depair. "He came in," I remember my ciousin saying, "when his team was on its knees and the first thing he did was knock a six." My father thought he was the best cricketer in the world - Bradman was too dull in comparision.
Now, reading an article in today's Daily Telegraph, my admiration for the man, who had only lived on radio and in my imagination, waned drastically. He doesn't seem a nice guy at all. In fact, the opposite. A snob who never travelled with the team he captained in Australia - Denis Compton said he never saw him until the game took place; a womaniser of the worst kind who absolutely neglected his alcoholic and depressed wife. I recall dimly that he returned from Australia in 1946-47 under a cloud due, it was rumoured, "to woman trouble". Then there was his rivalry with Bradman whom he had encountered in the 1928-29 series in Australia; then Bradman was a youngster batting at number 7 and scoring as few runs. But later when Bradman came into his own, Hammond could not live with the envy he felt for him. So his batting went down, his reputation went down and then he was taken ill in The West Indies with a "bug" which was probably siphillis.
Why do we put people on pedestals when all they are are sportsmen kicking balls around or throwing balls around. Well, cricket has always been different; it's somehow always been on a higher plane of sportsmanship. There's always been something elegant and gentlemanly about it. Hasn't there?
Well, sort of. But there was bodyline bowling. And now there's 20/20. It's not now in the tradition of that portrayed in Terence Rattigan's film "The Last Test" any more.
I used to have an oldish neighbour, a short, fat man who suffered terribly with asthma; he and I used to watch Glamorgan cricketers, playing on their old field in the centre of Cardiff, from the roof of the flats in Westgate Street. In his hardly-able-to-breathe voice he said "I once saw Wally Hammond play here. He came out and, first ball, he knocked a six into the bowling green." The bowling green was some distance away. I watched a lot of cricket at the Arms Park ground and never saw anyone hit a ball into the blowing green.

Gossip

Toby Young, in this week's Spectator, refers to the gossip that took place in diplomatic circles as brought to the public notice by Wikileaks; it may make diplomats in future be a bit more careful what they say. It seems that gossip is what they are most interested in. Young goes on to say how, when he reached a certain hieght in the American world of publishing, he expected influential people he got to know, around a dinner table at some function or other, to talk about important issues of the day: instead, they gossipped. And it was always about people on a higher rung of the ladder professionally or artistically or those on the same level - never about people on a lower level. According to Toby Young, people who gossip only gossip about people like themselves or those above them. He added that when one of the company left the room to go to the lavatory, they instantly started gossipping about him.
I had a similar experience with a group of writers. I was once a member of The Writers' Guild of GB (waste of my time and money); they decided to hold a meeting of Welsh members in Cardiff. Some well-known writers came down from London to help out (or show off). I can't recall what we talked about but I do recall a well known writer arriving late and saying, in a very important-sounding way that he was late because he had been to the BBC in Cardiff to talk about a script he had there. He wrote scripts for the series about London police forces (can't remember the title). After a while one fellow got up, excused himself, saying he had be somewhere etc. and he left. Instantly, everyone began talking about him. Or, rather, asking about him: "Who is he? Anybody know what he does?" No one knew anything about him. They all appeared quite put out by that. Which is when I decided I was going to stay to the end, boring as it all was, because none of them there knew who I was. I waited until the very end before rushing to the toilet for a much wanted pee.

Frozen Food

I recall asking a seller of frozen poultry if frozen was as good when defrosted and cooked as fresh. Guess what the answer was. Of course it was: all frozen foods are frozen when fresh so they keep their freshness; in fact they may be fresher than so-called fresh food because fresh food is not always as fresh as the label says.
Well, I have to say I was always a little suspicious of this and the chief reason was that a friend of mine had a cat - she was one of his eight or so cats - who was 15 years old and quite finicky with the food she ate; he told me she would not eat cooked frozen chicken, only fresh, and of course, Tony being Tony, this is what he always bought her.
Now, lions and tigers at zoos apparently know if an earthquake is imminent, so animals, you see, may not be able to reason like some of us but they instiuctively can tell us something about..... er.... earthquakes. So, ergo, they may be able to tell us something about food too, especiially the frozen kind.
The TV gardening bloke who was always pontificating in gentlemanly fashion about, well, everything, maintained that frozen peas are as good as fresh ones. He may know something about your friendly compost heap but let me tell you he knows - knew because he died (someone I knew was so fond of him she said "it was like losing a brother") - he knew nothing about peas. We used to grow peas and I used to boil them and eat them, on their own, with pepper and butter and they were delicious. I wouldn't do that with frozen peas.
Now I come to my acid test as regards frozen foods. I bought a hole hake, fresh at the fish market in Cardiff; it was too big for one meal so I froze half of it. The fresh cooked fish was ten times better than the frozen - and that was frozen fresh, just after buying it. The delicious, characteristic "hake taste" had gone; now it was just fish, any old fish, fishfinger fish.
So it'll be fresh turkey this year, not the usual frozen one we have had for the past few Christmases. Fresh turkey from Sainsbury or M&S or Waitrose and to hell with the price. A small one. A baby one.

Old Films

There is one thing I can say that's good about black and white films of the thirtees: I can understand every word said. That doesn't go for many modern films - anything with Sean Penn in are almost unwatchable because of his mumbling. To a certain extent I have to blame my own ears since, ageing, I am suffering with being "hard of earing" and have hearing aids which I use in the cinema and sometimes for programmes on TV, though, with a newly purchased "Box", sub-titles are now available.
Mostly it's women I find difficult hearing: the actresses on CSI are the worst; sub-titles are absolutely necessary for them.
Earlier in the week I went to see a very old film at Chapter Arts Centre: "The Old Dark House", a sort of horror film typical of the early 30's but with dashes of humour here and there throughout. While I found the film an experience worth having, a sort of novelty experience, I can't say I there was anything that jolted me in a scary way; indeed, it was at times quite laughable. Not that the laughs were at the film's style but they were, rather, part of the script. I read that this film is a cult classic which means it has never been popular with the mass of cinema-goers but with those who take "film" seriously - people who go to film societies for instance.
So while I enjoyed the film and laughed here and there I can't say that I thought it much good. It sort of clattered along in the way those films of that period did: not much subtlety there, straight-forward story telling, lots of little "frights".
I learn that it was based on a novel by J.B.Preistley. I never would have guessed. Though perhaps it was one of his stories that had to with time returning - but there was nothing of that stuff in this interpretation.
It was directed by James Whale who has, I believe, a greater reputation than he deserves. His "Frankenstein" made him popular and it is worth seeing but still over-rated I believe. He seemed to attract quaklity actors: in this film were Melvyn Douglas, Raymond Massey, Boris Karloff and a very young and rotund Charles Laughton playing a "self-made-man from 'op North".
Halliwell says of it: "A stylist's and connoisseur's treat" and gives it 4 stars.
One big thing going for it as far as I was concerned was taht I heard every word. Why is that? Made in 1932 and the sound track is perfect. "Mystic River" made in 2003 and I need sub-titles - especially for Sean Penn.