I tried once to read a John le Carre novel and failed to go further than 20 or so pages. I don't know why. The same reason, probably, I don't get on with Graham Greene's novels - except "The Comedians" which I liked enormously. I found his novel "Stamboul Train" enjoyable for about fifty pages until, inevitably I suppose, he introduced a character that was the devil incarnate. My favourite Greene story, a long one that may be called a novella, is "May we Borrow your husband". Maybe Greene and le Carre are similar writers in style as well as, sometimes, in content and maybe my aversion to le Carre stayed with me when I went to see the film "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy". I did not like it at all. The chief reason was that I simply didn't know what was going in, I just couldn't follow it. It kept going back to previous happenings without a break, so to speak, so that the drive forward of the narrative, if there was one, was all the time prevented. Flashbacks in my youth were frowned upon in films, actually booed sometimes; the screen would show wavey pictures and everyone would groan or shout insults or boo. Hitchcock used a flashback once in a not very good film called "Stage Fright"; it worked there because the murderer was telling what had happened and it was all a lie.
I looked up "Rotten Tomatoes", a website good for heaps of reviews of films: every reviewer bar one thought "Tinker, Tailor etc" was the best thing since sliced bread. One I agreed with; he too thought the film confusing and confused. Everyone said how good Gary Oldman was whereas I thought he walked, at a liesurely pace, through the film as if he were dreaming about something other than catching the Mole who turned out to be..... no, I won't tell you since you probably, like 90% of the world's population, will enjoy the film.
I believe you need to have read the book to make sense of the film and, as I said, I can't read Le Carre.
Thursday 13 October 2011
Thursday 6 October 2011
Drive
Now here's a film worth seeing: "Drive". It seems slow at times yet it drags you along excitedly, you are drawn into the spell of the chases and the violence. Is it excessively violent? In a review by Anthony Lane for The New Yorker he doesn't so much think it is excessive but that it takes your mind off the point of the action. He argues that the maiming of James Stewart in a western in which a villain shoots Stewart's hand so that he won't be able to do what he does well again i.e working the loand or shooting a gun with a fast draw. If the director had shown us the blood and gore when the bullet goes into the hand we would have that vicious act in mind whereas if, as he does, show only the painful response of Stewart's features we dwell not so much on the violence of the act but to what affect it has and will have to the character, that is, to the story as it unfolds. The violence in "Drive" is very much to the fore, presented in gory detail, blood everywhere, razors slicing arms etc. Horrible. Yet the film is terrific.
Basically it's a familiar tale about a man with no name meeting a family with a young son and becoming so attached to them that he wants to protect them from people who want to harm them. Can't help thinking of "Shane". He was man with almost no name, just one name. He came along from nowhere and with the ability to be as violent or, in this case, more violent, than those who wish to harm the family. In both cases you have a man with an attachment to no one who finds a family to love.
Anthony Lane is of course right: the violence is too blatant and takes away from the scenes any moralistic point. The only time in the film that a violent act is done but is not seen in close-up is when the hero, Driver, kicks a man to death in a lift. We hear it but we see only his back as he puts the boot in. This is an important scene because we not only see his back but, over his shoulder, we see the woman he is protecting drawing slowly away realising at last the nature of this man who has come to them as protecting agent. Or maybe angel.
Basically it's a familiar tale about a man with no name meeting a family with a young son and becoming so attached to them that he wants to protect them from people who want to harm them. Can't help thinking of "Shane". He was man with almost no name, just one name. He came along from nowhere and with the ability to be as violent or, in this case, more violent, than those who wish to harm the family. In both cases you have a man with an attachment to no one who finds a family to love.
Anthony Lane is of course right: the violence is too blatant and takes away from the scenes any moralistic point. The only time in the film that a violent act is done but is not seen in close-up is when the hero, Driver, kicks a man to death in a lift. We hear it but we see only his back as he puts the boot in. This is an important scene because we not only see his back but, over his shoulder, we see the woman he is protecting drawing slowly away realising at last the nature of this man who has come to them as protecting agent. Or maybe angel.
Sunday 2 October 2011
John Ford
Many moons ago I wrote to Clive James disagreeing with a review he had written of a TV version, with Stanley Baker if memory serves me well, of "How Green was my Valley". I told him I thought it wasn't a patch on the film version directed by John Ford. Wonder upon wonders, he wrote back saying he was not as great a fan of Ford as evidently I was. Today he has written in his TV column for the weekend Telegraph a piece about "Donovan's Reef": "How does a movie get quite as bad as Donovan's Reef? Directed by John Ford, this horrible mess was made in 1963, at just about the time that all the bright young film critics were trying to get Ford hailed as infallible. No doubt he was an efficient technician but his view of the world was like some endless recruiting commercial for the US cavalry." He doesn't like John Wayne either: "I always loathed John Wayne."
Well, I am not going to write a spirited defence of John Ford because there are only a few of his hundreds of films that I like - and, I have to agree with Clive James here, "Donovan's Reef" ain't one of them. But there's "The Searchers" and there's "The Man who shot Liberty Valence" and there's "The Grapes of Wrath" just for starters. Do you need to admire Ford for all he did when these marvellous ones are worth lauding his talents for. And there are great scenes in most of his films from the pit disaster in "How Green was my Valley" to "The Horse Soldiers" to "Sergeant Rutledge".
As for John Wayne - how can you loathe him with his smile and his drawl and the way he walks: he's not so much an actor as a physical presence on the big screen that you can't help admiring - unless you are Clive James.
In the same article he wrote appreciatively of "Billy Connolly's Route 66".... now there's a man worth loathing.
Well, I am not going to write a spirited defence of John Ford because there are only a few of his hundreds of films that I like - and, I have to agree with Clive James here, "Donovan's Reef" ain't one of them. But there's "The Searchers" and there's "The Man who shot Liberty Valence" and there's "The Grapes of Wrath" just for starters. Do you need to admire Ford for all he did when these marvellous ones are worth lauding his talents for. And there are great scenes in most of his films from the pit disaster in "How Green was my Valley" to "The Horse Soldiers" to "Sergeant Rutledge".
As for John Wayne - how can you loathe him with his smile and his drawl and the way he walks: he's not so much an actor as a physical presence on the big screen that you can't help admiring - unless you are Clive James.
In the same article he wrote appreciatively of "Billy Connolly's Route 66".... now there's a man worth loathing.
Saturday 1 October 2011
Waitors
This morning in Sainsbury's I queued for a coffee; there was only one person in front of me but the waiter/coffee server, who was dark skinned, probably an Ethiopian, was so slow in everthing he did that when the woman in front of me said " pot of tea please and four lattes" I thought better of waiting and just sat down and re4ad the newspaper. Probably he was in training; there was no one there to help him and I did feel a little sorry for him but feeling sorry for him was not going to hasten the arrival of my beverage.
He remindedf me of those "darkies", as they were then called, who appeared in films in the late 30's and early 40's and who always appeared slow and rather daft. I recall one whose name I never knew, a servant to Bob Hope in two films one of which was "The Cat and the Canary" an excellent thriller/comedy; he spoke in a "Down-South" accent and did everything wrong so that Bob Hope could make fun of him. We in the audience laughed along with it all. You don't laugh now. It's not surprising that blacks in America (and here) are so sensitive to criticism or suggestions that they are somehow inferior when films like that made them appear stupid.
Times have changed and, in general, for the better.
I was reading David Thomson on the D.W.Griffith film "Birth of a Nation" in which blacks are treated contemtuously and cruelly; Griffith makes the Ku Klux Klan to be the heroes of his film. The film when it was made was very popular and, indeed, was graetly responsible for the uprising of the Klan so that they were rejuvenated into carrying out further lynches. Thomson believes it to be a horribly one-sided and prejudiced film but that it has qualities that make it fascinating. He concludes: "Yes, you should see this appalling film."
I doubt if even an art house or film society would dare show it these days.
I have just seen D.W.Griffiths's silent film "Orphans of the Storm" and that is terrific. I once showed a BFI copy of this film (abridged to half an hour) to a group of Technical College students in a Film Study class. When I asked, at the end of the year, which film or part of film they enjoyed most out of the many I showed them, they all said "Orphans of the Storm".
He remindedf me of those "darkies", as they were then called, who appeared in films in the late 30's and early 40's and who always appeared slow and rather daft. I recall one whose name I never knew, a servant to Bob Hope in two films one of which was "The Cat and the Canary" an excellent thriller/comedy; he spoke in a "Down-South" accent and did everything wrong so that Bob Hope could make fun of him. We in the audience laughed along with it all. You don't laugh now. It's not surprising that blacks in America (and here) are so sensitive to criticism or suggestions that they are somehow inferior when films like that made them appear stupid.
Times have changed and, in general, for the better.
I was reading David Thomson on the D.W.Griffith film "Birth of a Nation" in which blacks are treated contemtuously and cruelly; Griffith makes the Ku Klux Klan to be the heroes of his film. The film when it was made was very popular and, indeed, was graetly responsible for the uprising of the Klan so that they were rejuvenated into carrying out further lynches. Thomson believes it to be a horribly one-sided and prejudiced film but that it has qualities that make it fascinating. He concludes: "Yes, you should see this appalling film."
I doubt if even an art house or film society would dare show it these days.
I have just seen D.W.Griffiths's silent film "Orphans of the Storm" and that is terrific. I once showed a BFI copy of this film (abridged to half an hour) to a group of Technical College students in a Film Study class. When I asked, at the end of the year, which film or part of film they enjoyed most out of the many I showed them, they all said "Orphans of the Storm".
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