A Weblog of Curious Things.
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Wednesday, 3rd May, 2006 pm
195.D: F. Lang: Dr Mabuse, The Gambler, Part II, 1922, 115'02"
Things do speed up a little in the second Part of Dr Mabuse. Our stupid hero the Attorney is sent towards a quarry in his car by a phony hypnotist - played by Mabuse. Meanwhile he holds an audience mesmerised by a procession of Arabs emerging, as it were, from the screen. Mabuse's influence at a distance owes a lot to Nosferatu but the ossification of the arteries was already happening by 1922 - just one year after Murnau's Symphony of Horrors. There is a long and maybe dull chapter to be written some day about the German view of Arabia in the cinema. Maybe it would include honourary Son of the Desert Alfred Hitchcock for his peculiar resort to and retreat from the desert in his strange remake of The Man Who Knew Too Much.
He disliked the heat of the North African locations and cut the filming short, electing to film some colourful Souk scenes as unconvincing process shots on a sound stage. There was a real location for the Ambrose Chapel but those fifties London streets have an empty De Chirico air. The back of the Chapel was another studio invention. The question is why did Hitch want to set his travelogue-like first part of the story in North Africa at all. The European context of the troubled thirties had given the earlier film an urgency and it was not too hard to see that a Temple of the Sun might be an outpost of German wickedness, even if their congregation of old biddies was a little hard to explain. The later version gives us Africa instead of Switzerland, a taxidermist instead of a dentist and a Christian Chapel in place of the occultists.
Most of my exhibits would come from Herzog, I admit. The things poor Kaspar Hauser sees in his head. The things that Herzog went to see and could only report as dreams and mirages in Fata Morgana. Listening to Herzog commentating on his own movies is a peculiar experience. Is he deliberately dumbing things down? Is he hiding a lack of expertise in English? Maybe he is a little bored by his compliant interviewer(s). Or he just wants to throw us back on the sheer strangeness of his visuals, even when we suspect they had a perfectly reasonable intellectual justification.
The intellect that dare not raise its head. Surely he knows his German cinema history, whatever the technological deficiencies of his childhood. I don't fully buy the wild child mythos he beguilingly weaves anyway. He has had plenty of time to catch up.
Anyway back to Lang. His Attorney is lead to his near-death experience by a word of doom: Melior, which appears on the avenue of trees towards the quarry. I think Tarantino has experimented with this kind of direct screen-writing but in a playful way that will not compromise the serious action sequences. He may have got his ideas from Vigo, who animates the lampoons of the children in Zéro de Conduite.
The siege was surely noted by Hitchcock - in Berlin at this period - and used in The Man Who Knew Too Much, version one, 1934. The effeminate and fat men called on to shoot were rolled into one in the more charismatic personality of Peter Lorre - by then famous or notorious as the child-killer in Lang's M. The shadowy butch woman is taken over more or less complete. The staging of the siege caused Hitchcock censorship problems. Presumably he followed the German precendent and had shooting from early on, before the military are brought in.
It has to be said that Hitchcock knew how to turn an exciting situation into a humanly involving one. In Lang's film, we are only curious to know exactly how Mabuse will bite the dust. As it happens, he will descend into his own underworld of blind men and ghosts. Hitch gives us the innocent hostage in peril on the roof. Lang does not allow Mabuse to use the Countess as a hostage.
Friday, 5th May, 2006 am
278.D: R. Walsh: White Heat, 1949, 108'40"
Verna: Why don't ya keep it all?...Why don't ya? We could travel, buy things. That's what money's for. I'd look good in a mink coat, honey.
Cody: You'd look good in a shower curtain.
On the surface, there could hardly be more contrasted actors than Antony Perkins and James Cagney. The one gangling but outwardly polite. The other anything but a nice boy. Yet both have alter-egos in the form of murderous mothers. Cody Jarrett is morbidly dependent on Ma. She is so incensed by his being cuckolded that she attempts to plug the perp. Instead he gets her in the back and seals his own fate as Cody goes ever deeper into madness. Norman Bates won't share his mother with another man so he kills them both so he can embody his own mother.
I don't know if Hitchcock saw White Heat. He didn't make gangster pictures: his villains and heroes and heroines are all middle class - his Cuban revolutionaries in Topaz may wear army fatigues but they have nice mistresses and nicer villas. Edmund Gwenn is about as low-life as Hitch went, starting as an upstart factory owner in The Skin Game, passing through chummy paid killer in Foreign Correspondent and ending as a retired seaman in the Trouble with Harry. Frenzy has a down-market or at least down-the-market feel but the cockney fruiterer is lower middle class, owning his own business, like Hitchcock's father, while the down on his luck scapegoat has a public school manner.
Probably Cody and Norman have some common cause in primitive Freudianism. There may also be some cinematic forerunners. Maybe somewhere behind the Jaretts on the run there lies the counter-type of the Joads in The Grapes of Wrath. The good mother replaced by an evil one.
Cody's headaches are described by the detectives as some kind of a pseudo-fit to get the attention of his mother. Yet as he collapses onto all fours, Cagney may be drawing on the stage vocabulary of a Jekyll & Hyde transformation.
White Heat contains the most startling scene of suggested homosexual activity in forties cinema. To infiltrate the Jarett gang, an informer needs to get close to him in prison. His early overtures are brushed aside but Cody's chill melts after Pardo has saved his life. In the prison workshop, Fallon takes on the rôle of comforter, cradling cody's head in is lap as he massages the back of his neck. That shot stands out for being an activity hidden from the guards and fellow prisoners. We might wonder if its full meaning is kept from the audience. It is notable that the undercover cop has a beard for a wife.
Later, Cody catches Pardo on his way out of their hide-out. The cop explains that he was on his way to a rendevous with his wife. At this point Cody expresses his contempt for Velma, asserting that the only woman who mattered to him was his mother. He explains that he still talks to his mother. This is a Gothic scene with dark trees and high winds stirring them. The night ends with Cagney being ridden upstairs by Velma as if the sexual tensions of the night have finally to be resolved in an acceptable way. He has promised Vic that they will take a vacation after the big job. It seems clear that he has in mind the three of them and probably not Vic's wife.
In Psycho, we are encouraged to feel sympathetic towards Marion because of her frustrated existence in an irksome job apart from her fiance and with no prospect of improvement in the short term. Unlike Velma, she wants cash to buy off unhappiness - the phrase, used by the obnoxious customer who waves his wad of cash in her face. She gives in to a momentary impulse - fatally as it turns out. Velma's disloyalty is however typical and instinctive. For Cody, the shower-curtain remark seems to contain at least three elements - sexual flirtation, a notion of uncovering and a suggestion of economy. He is saying he knows what she is like naked.
In White Heat, Cagney gets to kick Velma off her chair - violence towards women was a trademark of his gangsters.
If Public Enemy had ended with Cagney as the Mummy, White Heat begins with his accomplice being scalded in hot steam. Wrapped in bandages, he becomes a liability. Yet the mercy of his henchman in not delivering the coup de grace he is told to turns out to add to the horror - we learn that he starved and froze to death helplessly in the cabin.
Part of White Heat is played out at a Motel. It is here that Verna has got her mink coat and here that Cody kicks her off the chair. The car is traced there by detectives and one of them makes the error of going to spy out the land alone, while his colleague tries to restore radio contact.
Our first shot of Marion Crane is teasing and post-coital. There is an air of sleaze about the afternoon assignation but we are encouraged to see her more positively when she reveals how she hates these snatched sex sessions. Velma is introduced to us in bed, mouth open, snoring loudly - unmistakably the slut. She is, however, a survivor. Turning up at the scene of the final shoot-up and inferno of White Heat, she looks set to play the girl-friend for the police to coax Cody to lay down his weapons in return for a blind-eye to her own crimes - which include murder. In the final insult, she is weighed up and dismissed quickly - hustled out of the way so she does not get to steal any of Cagney's finale. At least she makes it nearly to the end of the picture, unlike XXX who is forgotten about in Angels.
Both movies feature corpses in the boots of cars. Marion becomes luggage and has her paper with the money thrown in undetected. Cagney insists on springing the prisoner who had made an attempt on his life. Made to ride in the boot, Cody leaves him in there overnight and casually shoots air-holes for him the next morning - while eating a chicken drumstick.
Our introduction to Ma comes as she tells him she could do with some help. This might seem like an appeal for her little boy to do some of the woman's work but it turns out to be a hint that her daughter-in-law is not up to the mark. The cold of this cabin is emphasised - Cody will not allow a fire for fear of the smoke betraying their whereabouts.
While Cody is in jail for confessing a minor offence he tells his cellmates how Ma will keep his share of the cash. We then fade directly from Cody's face to that of Ma Jarrett presiding over the gang and making the same point. While not quite as striking as Hitchcock's famous face-merge shot, this does make a similar point in a lower key.
Late in the picture, Cagney is visited by his Trader. It is notable that this man speaks in a different more genteel register from the gang members. "Your truck will be driven past these checkers by an ex-convict of my acquaintance. He's now leading a scrupulously-honest life, as a truck driver for this very firm." There is an amusingly suggestive scene where the gang wait outside and discuss whether something funny is going on between Cagney and the visitor. His fishing cover is seen through by Pardo, who began the picture planning a long vacation. In the event, his task is a form of fishing for men. The scene in which Cagney introduces his old friend to his new one suggests sexual jealousy. As if to make the situation crystal clear, Cagney introduced Vic as his partner, "Vic's my partner. Fifty-fifty."
The feminising of Vic is clear when he uses soap to write a message on the truck-stop mirror. This is nearly always a girl-thing done with lipstick. When he pegs his coat over to hide it, it is suggestive of a sexuality undercover.
The curious thing about the film is the lack of any emotional space granted to Pardo: we know what he does and we know he is faking. Yet his face remains mask-like and grittily masculine. There is little sense of anything personally attractive in his manner. The chilly performance and lack of any emotional exploration of his rôle by the script - it was potentially an equal part to Cagney's: what kind of a man would spend half of his life locked away in prisons to bring criminals to justice? Pardo remains hard which seems to give Jarrett permission to go soft. As it is, perhaps wisely, the star has our entire emotional engagement. Velma and Big Ed are also totally unsympathetic characters. The mother is a wonderful grotesque but she is not even allowed a death-scene. The way Walsh has this reported allows the shock of the event to register with the audience exactly at the same point it reaches Cody.
The Cagney-hard and Cagney-soft game was played it might seem to the limit in Angels with Dirty Faces. His final collapse is allowed to remain ambiguous. Has he finally lost it, faced by the reality of the technology of his execution or does he go to his death in disguise and - for the audience in the cinema - somehow save his face, even if he loses it for the sake of the kids. The final scene of White Heat is also going to confront Cagney with the brutalism of technological architecture in giant forms. He ought to be dwarfed by the Hortonsphere, but as the evocation of his Ma makes clear, he sees it just a great metal tit.
White may be the colour of intense heat but it also the colour of milk. It is the heat of milk that is oddly evoked by the customer in Psycho. It is milk that Perkins will bring to Janet Leigh in her chalet. It was milk that glowed with radioactive light in Suspicion and it will be in the guise of an atomic explosion that the Hortonsphere will erupt at the end of White Heat.
"Park across the street. If there's any trouble, give us the horn hard." Cody's instructions to Verna for the big heist may carry a certain innuendo but he wants her at arm's length. Again, she is willing to betray him, this time to the police but they can see through her and will not play.
The final sequence was shot on-location in Torrance, California, in the Hortonsphere area of the refinery. "How do ya like that, Ma?" in Cody's big finale, we do not hear the Mother speaking through him but he is clearly speaking to her. It is Cagney's own wild firing spree which sets off the apocalyptic explosion but it is Fallon, whom he has known throughout as Pardo, who wounds him. Daring to speak the name and killing the thing you love must lead in 1949 to a complete annihilation. Never before or since has the death of a gangster been seen in such apocalyptic terms. Only Kiss Me Deadly and Dr Strangelove dared to push the button during the fifties and sixties, the one a paranoid thriller and the other a black comedy of sexual dysfunction in high places.
By 1960, there was Psycho and a glimpse of fusion. The ending a whimper not a bang. The shower curtain in Psycho may be the last of the veils. In the film, it is clear that by the time she takes her fatal shower, Marion has made up her mind to face her demons and return to Phoenix. The shower has an air of relief and refreshment. In her conversation with Norman, Marion has seen the impossibility of any escape based on the stolen cash. We sense it even before she states that she intends to return and face the music.
For Hitchcock, a curtain was always ready to be penetrated from behind by the barrel of a gun. It's in TMWKTM both versions, Torn Curtain etc. Death by knife is more intimate and he has put the knife in the hands of a woman before, when Sylvia Sydney kills her husband in Sabotage. Grace Kelly uses scissors to stab her assailant in Dial M for Murder. The death of the main character in Psycho was clearly meant to be a violation of the normal. It was as if a knife had been taken to the movie itself. In fact it wounds the film fatally and it crawls to its death an hour later: there is no denying that the second part of Psycho is unworthy of the first part. The detective, the lover and the sister are underdeveloped characters who investigate the loss of the picture's anima - notion which sounds interesting psychologically but turns out to be dramatically impossible. As in Vertigo, the double seems a very poor relation - Hitch's punishment of Vera Miles? The second murder is of an entirely dispensible character, whose call back to Miles & XXX seems implausible. By the time we have them poking around the spooky house, all notion of subverting genres seems to have vanished. All he can do is wind things up with cod psychology.
In White Heat, the anima figure disappears at a similar point. Unlike the endlessly-quoted shower-scene, Ma's death is a reported absence, a hole blown into Cody's already precariously-balanced mind. There is some doubt as to the exact circumstances of the death - Big Ed and Verna are neither reliable witnesses. Probably Verna plugged her from behind but then Verna is a very phallic figure: she has never coddled Cody the way Ma did and the way Pardo does. She literally rides him upstairs to bed and their exchanges throughout the film are combative. The most intimate moments in the film are between Cody and Pardo: the intimate exchanges in the prison cell while their cell-mate snores - shades of Verna's entrance? Later the Gothic wind in the trees scene, where Cody will use the state of his own soul to discourage Pardo from a supposed union with his wife.
Pardo as name suggests a few things: partner, leopard, pardon? Verna isn't exactly redolent of Spring. Joady Carrot
would give us a Spoonerism to take on both The Grapes of Wrath and the Carrot of Cagney's hair colour. Fallon is Pardo's real name, suggestive of a fallen man, a fall guy, a guy who is always going down. More suggestively, a guy another guy can fall on. His real name will not do: as one rises another falls. The chosen pseudonym suggests equality but the reality of the power relations is otherwise. The plot of White Heat is to allow Jarrett to think he is on top. It is his own partiality for Pardo which sinks his greatest venture and allows a traitor into the midst of the gang. If Pardo has taken the place of his mother and given him suck when he goes down, it is fitting he should finally go up on a giant metal titty, attached more or less to its fiery, corrosive nipple.
If the Hortonsphere finale represents the nipple, he has got there in a tanker. He rides within and the symbol he has drunk at his mother's lap is that of the Trojan horse. We have seen the tanker much earlier in Cagney's career: in Public Enemy, it is the supposed petrol tanker which syphons drink from the bonded warehouse. The tanker in White Heat has never seen action before. Its virgin nature is stressed - the gang have invested twelve thousand dollars of their own money in its purchase. Their intended job shows such a modest return on the investment that Cagney insists on rewriting the plan for higher stakes. The job must be a child of his own conception and he travels to it inside a symbolic womb. So he remains, sealed in this womb and kept from the fatal knowledge that Pardo is Fallon. The implausible dramaturgy is finessed by Walsh's brisk story-telling powers: Fallon can only be seen as he is at the very end. Ejected from the womb and betrayed by the false tit of Fallon, Cody must ascend to the armour-plated dug of his mother reborn in fire.
This association of Cagney with milk is carried over from his earlier film with Walsh, the Roaring Twenties from 1939. Though it may seem a quintessential Cagney gangster picture, this earlier piece lacks the detailed psychological perversity his characters normally have. Instead it makes a case for him as a loser drawn into the easy-money ethos of prohibition and pathetically left behind when the crash comes. He is the potential good guy who never had a fair crack of the whip after the First World War, weak rather than evil, it is not the sort of part which any star would consent to play these days. We know that Cagney is on the slide in that picture when he stops drinking milk in the speakeasies and resorts to swigging his own hooch. Earlier the copious amounts of lemonade served at a suburban villa turn out to be an indication of the juvenile nature of the girl who has been sending him letters in the trenches. He is such a good guy in this film that he can't wait to get away!
In his attachment to his mother, Jarrett may replace and deny his father. The madman whose fate he denies is one whose fate he needs unconsciously to outdo in madness. His way to the cross must be obscure to himself. This is why the tanker must be new - it represents a new covenant, the virgin womb. His fifty-fifty twin occupies the space with him as befits any heretical text. In charge of the whole business is The Trader, a shadowy figure from Cody's past but hardly of his class. Fallon - when he is still Fallon - plans a fishing vacation. Now he will catch a pretended fisherman, though he is a pretend fisher-of-men himself. The uncovering of The Trader's guise may serve as the final demonstration of Pardo's loyalty to Jarrett, though it is hardly necessary by this time. Cagney's declaration that Pardo is his fifty-fifty partner has a sense of trade about it. There is, I think, no question about who has been on top in the Trader-Cody relationship. About the felationship of Cody and Fallon, there is some doubt. The character of The Trader is one of the most intriguing in movies: we see him only in rôle, kitted out in an elaborate disguise. Clearly he has a long and trusting relationship with Cody but he comes from a very different world.
In the criminal plot, he is the middle-man who disposes of hot currency at around a third of its face value. The gang that Cody has gathered around him seem impervious to such secrets: from the start, Big Ed. is determined to depose the nutcase and impose his own heavyweight leadership. While Ed. is clearly impervious and resolutely, stolidly phallic, Cody seems to stand at the crossroads, belatedly revealing his knowledge of Trade. White Heat is notably not at all concerned with the fate of the Trader. Mister Big has showed up in the final reels, only to escape we assume and fight another day in some Protean guise. Quietly, almost unobserved, as we focus on Jarrett and the unmasking of Pardo, we may all have let slip an altogether more slippery fish.
Perkins and Cagney appear to have attracted rumours of bisexuality in Hollywood. Those about Perkins seem to have been confirmed. Cagney's mother-fixated persona was set early on in the play x x x x. His career as a dancer was rumoured to have been aided by various interested patrons.
Cagney was not a beauty by any means but his snub-nosed, red-haired urchin-appeal was appropriate in a juvenile. His cinema career was posited on a very skilful papering over the cracks. He hadn't the build for a heavy, so his toughness had to come from his lightness on his feet and mental volatility. He wasn't made for whole-hearted romance - he was the kid who would kiss a girl and spit it out or pull a face as if offended by the soft stuff. The grapefruit is an extension of this. Those of us - wisely or not - exposed to Cagney movies as kids, may recall the instinctive appeal of that persona. The films may be adult in their implications but Cagney offered a way into that world. If we were reading the films carefully, it was hardly a way in at all but what kid reads carefully? It is one of the marvels of Angels with Dirty Faces, that the Dead End Kids read papers to keep up with their hero. Here was a picture in which Cagney's arrested development could be presented in an uplifting light, though the combination of religion, crime and youth opens the text to less innocent interpretations.
I don't know how much of White Heat was filmed chronologically but it seems as if the early scenes feature a Cagney with an obvious blemish on his lower lip: perhaps a cold-sore or even a growth that had been removed. Anyway, the make-up job does not cover it early on. I think there may be fewer close-ups as the film progresses or we get used to Cagney's face and enjoy the undiminished energy. Truth to tell, it isn't good in that first glimpse we have: grim and determined though he is, it is hard not to feel he looks puffy and punch-drunk.
There was a hint of the ageing midget in Cagney's looks as he got older. He drives to the train hold-up like an old champion wheeled out for a come-back about which few doubt the outcome. It is a cunning and high-risk entrance, to start with Cagney hemmed into a car as he is carried to his destination, only the speed of the car hints that its contents may be highly-explosive. He belies those expectations and once he is up and shooting, the old energy seems to be back with a vengeance. In the final reel of the movie we will see Cagney delivered in even more confined conditions to the scene of a more apocalyptic explosion. He could be seen as a Jack-in-the-Box, the spring tightly compressed also, of course, the rules of the atom demand that the force of the explosion is directed inwards before the core will go critical.
White Heat is above all else an action film so this delving into psychology might seem excessive. How much was intentional? In a dense, fast-moving and high-pressure picture, aren't we just joining a few random dots? It is not my intention to suggest that my meanings were ever intended by anyone before. I do want to suggest that the dark matter of what has previously been unexpressed and maybe inexpressible is not a fog or a mist. Rather, it is a tremendously heavy, dark, rich matter which parts - when it does - along certain seams. Every important work of art may open new faces and almost immediately a flock of lesser miners start chipping away at the surfaces newly exposed. The critics concern themselves with waiting for the dust to settle, carting away the rubble and assessing the usefulness of the new direction. In this strange division of labour, it hardly ever necessary for anyone to have intentions at all. That does not prevent the rock of this prima materia from having fault-lines. As yet, there is no critical geology which can predict them so we'd prefer to be peering into the débris of the past than predicting the earthquakes to come.
Monday, 8th May, 2006, am
281.D: R. Walsh: The Roaring Twenties, 1939, 102'
Monday, 8th May, 2006, pm
281.D: The Roaring Twenties, Extras, 56'31"
Monday, 8th May, 2006 into Tuesday, 9th May, 2006, am
281.D: R. Walsh: The Roaring Twenties, version with commentary,1939, 102'
Wednesday, 10th May, 2006 pm into Thursday, 11th May, 2006, am
290.D: K. Reisz: The French Lieutenant's Woman, 1981, 118'35"
Friday, 12th May, 2006, am
291.D: B. Forbes: Whistle Down the Wind, 1961, 95'00"
Saturday, 13th May, 2006, am
269.D: W. Herzog: Fitzcarraldo, German version, English subtitles, 1981, 150'45"
Sunday, 14th May, 2006, am
150.V: F. Lang: The Testament of Dr. Mabuse, 1933, from BBC2 broadcast of September 1998, 112'28"
Doubling, Integration and Vastation in Mabuse
List of Doubles:
1: The Testament was the resurrection of Mabuse from a sleep of nearly a dozen years. The 1922 silent film Dr Mabuse, der Spieler had itself been a twin film, intended for exhibition on two nights.
2: Lang and his wife Thea van Harbou collaborated on bothe these films. She was already a member of the Nazi Party and they would separate when the quarter-Jewish Lang departed for Hollywood.
3: In both Mabuse projects, the evil Doctor is doubled with a detective, whose entourage reflects his own. In Der Spieler, both figures have three variously comic and grotesque henchmen. In The Testament, the focus is upoon a single retainer. Lohmann has a fussy and put-upon minion, conceived comically in the manner of a stage-notary or servant. Mabuse is waited upon by asylum staff but bends the Director of the institution to do his will.
4: Throughout The Testament, Mabuse is effectively operating from within his cell almost as if from beyond the grave. His communications are collated by the Director and form the basis for a new crime-wave. Dr Mabuse lives again in the character of Dr Baum.
5: The informer Hofmeister will be driven mad by fear of Mabuse.
6: The combination of a crime-wave, a lunatic in his cell and the notion of affect at a distance may recall the case of James Tilly Matthews, whose curious writings and drawings were collated by Haslam the Director. By the time of Mabuse, all the modern devices of telephony and gramophones were employed to perform these sinister deeds. The deranged Hofmeister is seen sitting at a glass desk forever speaking into an invisible telephone. This represents the moment he called for help from Lohmann who delayed. The figure of Lohmann is unusual for today's audiences who are used to detectives as supermen and increasingly superwomen, balancing the job of being ideal husbands, wives and parents with that of keeping the streets clean of scum. Lohmann begins with no such earnestness - a portly, middle-aged figure, he wants to enjoy the good life and knock off from work on time. He is conceived half comically half approvingly as a German Everyman. His earthy persona seems to be a guarantee of immunity from the fanaticism and madness of Mabuse. Once alerted to the seriousness of the cause, he is willing to risk his life in a gun battle but alerting him to the scale of the problem is one of the major uphill struggles.
7: Mabuse begins as a card-shark and hypnotist. In Der Spieler, he is the master of disguise and it is clear that his motive is as much power as profit. He may forgo immediate profits in order to cash in favours later. He needs to have the world dance to his tune but when he meets resistance, his own powers seem to close in on him. His machines become beasts which threaten to devour him. His mastery of disguise may signal a lack of any real personality. We see him at the end of Der Spieler, cowering among his forged notes as the spectres of his victims close in on him.
8: In The Testament he has, like Blake's Urizen, drawn into himself completely. In the isolation of his cell, he begins to write his diabolical New Testament. These are instructions for a new wave of terror - every human institution is to be attacked to destabilize the population. Examples of horror: arson, robbery, plague and counterfeiting. It is not surprising that these scribblings have been compared to the Mein Kampf which Adolf Hitler wrote in gaol. The will to power impresses the Asylum Director Baum and in a memorable scene, the monstrous spectre of Mabuse actually fuses with him.
9: Madness in the Mabuse films seems to be a state of the contemporary soul. We do not set off looking for it in the childhood of Mabuse or Baum. We know that Hofmeister has undertaken dangerous undercover work and given in to corruption previously - the pressures are alarmingly depicted at the start of the film. We are seeing what drives him mad: the hideous thumping of infernal machinery and the assault by invisible hands in the street.
10: Faced with the demented Director who thinks he has become Mabuse, Lohmann takes refuge in the fact that coppers don't need to understand such things, a pragmatism which has been lost by 1960, when a psychiatrist employed by the state will tediously spell out the unlikely cinematic fusion of a boy with his mother.
11: Mabuse is historically fascinating. So many of the elements of the gangster picture are already present but his will to power seems curiously sexless. It is true that in Der Spieler, he has kept the dancer XXX in his circular love-nest but this is historic background merely. At the start of the action he is already using her rather as Klingsor uses Kundry, to bring down the Knights of the Grail. She still desires him, however. Later, he will prepare that long-empty chamber for the imprisonment of the Countess Told. There may be a certain vampiric sexual menace to his advances and to the sight of her inert body in his arms. Yet, for the climax, he has to relinquish her and we feel she was essentially more hostage than obsessive possession.
12: The last spectacular crime of Mabuse in Testament is the fire at a chemical works. There is some spectacular footage of the plant in flames and the railway engines which hinder the cops in their persuit. It looks, for a minute or two as if we are going to see some sort of White Heat conclusion. We see the Doctor chased into a woodland area, presumably still close to the chemical plant but his flight from the scene leaves the chaos he has created strangely suspended. Is it an objective correlative for the chaos within? No shots suggest this. In fact the connection with the fiery landscape is not profiled or underlined as it would ne in a Hollywood picture. Instead we get a memorable nocturnal car-chase - perhaps down the same avenue of trees on which Wend once saw the magic word MELIOR. We are led back to the eerie gates of the asylum and it looks as if the terrified Hofmeister is going to be murdered. Instead the final scenes bring us Dr. Baum tearing up papers in a state of breakdown like that of the first Mabuse.
13: The Mabuse films are essentially derived from pulp fiction and serials. They are not masterpieces of construction and their type of event is probably better suited to the serial form. Countless serials traded in the invisible master-criminal villain. Nor is Mabuse-Baum averse to the needlessly-protracted death scenarios, which enable our heroes and heroines to escape by the skin of their teeth. I like the sealed room with the ticking bomb here partly because the sounds of this film are thematic. From the thumping machines at the start to the horns which accompany the assassination of Kramm. By flooding the room, the hero & heroine risk drowning but they hope the water will absorb the shock and fire of the bomb. When it does explode they are left with a neat plug-hole in the centre of the room through which to make their escape. Intercut with their plight, we have the shoot-out between police and villains. These mobsters with their expensive suits and cheaps molls look distinctly American here, just as the illegal casinos of Der Spieler reflect the speakeasy culture of prohibition.
14: It is said that Lang at this date could begin a picture with a list of the key scenes he wanted to include. A story was woven around it. Hitchcock was doing the same as late as North by North West. It is said that Lang greatly envied Hitch's public profile and he did a fair amount of self-mythologising. Among the first words we see on the screen at the start of Testament are Ein Fritz Lang Film. It would take Hitchcock a few more years to achieve a name above the title.
15: Vastation - the emptying of a scene of all actors. When this happens in Der Spieler, it is prolonged and seems to lack convincing expressive purpose, It happens briefly in Testament, after Kramm has sealed his fate by revealing what he knows about Mabuse. He is accompanied to the outer door by a servant who engages him in conversation about the rain. We hear this conversation at the front door but the camera remains on the closed doors of the study, suggestive of the hidden decisions which deceide a man's destiny. Our final sight of Kramm will be sealed within his car, an image of freedom, here turned on its head as he is surrounded by vehicles. Even his death cries will be drowned out by the orchestrated motor horns. This was an early sound film but one in which lang seemed to be revelling in all the expressive possibilities it opened up.
16: In their methods of detection the police in Testament seem very modern and rational. Matching of guns and bullets is the heart of their case.
Sunday, 14th May, 2006, pm
136.XCD: Gramophone on CD, April 2006, 73'03"
137.XCD: Gramophone on CD, May 2006, 59'47"
Snippets. Does anything entice? Are the tastes of the Nosferatu any improvement on the Gramophone's last editor? Probably not. The Vivaldi is sprightly and clean but what are we to make of these tiny snatches? No words no situation, we are left with am impression of the tidy, the chilly, the pert. in a pleasing acoustic. Nothing to stick. The Hummel Mozart arrangement is hardly a necesary addition to the catalogue. Some turns of phrase in this Finale were recalled by Beethoven for his own big Eb Concerto. It is a pleasing piece whih does not outstay its welcome. The Veracini we are warned is a Baroque violin performance so the agility is projected on a thin-toned instrument. The Spicer Oratorio is eclectic stuff which pleased John Steane. The performance sounds a little weedy, considering the large gestures. Maybe it is scored for economy. I could not make out the words. The Brahms movement was beautifully done, one of the highlights of the evening. The Chabrier was played on a Fazioli piano, which had been the subject of a Radio 4 documentary during the week. Particular care is taken to tune the overtones on these modern instruments and it is said their action is particularly responsive to quiet passages. It was recorded here in the resonant acoustic of an Italian hotel. Though designated a Minuet, the piece seemed to rely on some Wagnerian rhythms - one of Chabrier's jokes? Franck's Symphony should never be streamlined or it emerges as a slick and essentially meaningless machine. It should grab us by the lapels and sound as if it means business. Any air of a stately well-oiled vehicle being put through its paces is fatal. I got the feeling the Liège Orchestra was wanting to demonstrate a modern fluency and refinement and had chosen quite the wrong piece for it, however patriotic.
Why the Gramophone had chosen for its cover-disc a Mendelssohn organ fragment which the reviewer found insipid is a minor mystery. The reviewer was right so the virtues of the disc have to be taken on trust. The splashy harlotries of Messiaen inspire admiration in some. Perhaps God likes them. Lenski's aria from Onegin was given a good Italianate performance by Villazón but I think it thrives better with a purely lyric style. From the past, we get a good chunk of the Immolation in Nilsson's live Bayreuth account under Böhm. Though intense and alive, she is uncharacteristically under the note a lot of the time here. Probably it sounds a lot greater in context. She was certainly a phenomenon. The Piazzolla excerpt works its gestures to death - this potent demotic style needs a whiff more sweat about it. In its juicy sequential writing, Wagner's example is less far away than might be apparent.
The May package brings a lively Schubert March from Kissin & Levine, a wonderful transcription of two Bach cello movements for solo trumpet, two very good Mozart singers a cheesy bit of Weill and a hefty slice of Silja's Senta.
Monday, 15th May, 2006, am
142.V: C. Rodley: Leo Marks & Peeping Tom Documentary, 1997, 49'35"
142.V: M. Powell: Peeping Tom, 1960, 96'51"
Tuesday, 16th May, 2006, pm into Wednesday, 17th May, 2006, am
304.V: A. Hitchcock: Topaz, Theatrical Version, 1969, 120'13"
In the opening shot of Topaz, the camera swoops own as if to peep into a window - a familiar beginning for a Hitchcock thriller. In this case, however, our snooping is forestalled by a face which gazes back from a mirror. Not quite our own fear-distorted face as we are penetrated by a tripod-bayonet but clearly we are about to enter a reflexive world. Spies may after all be akin to voyeurs, even if their desire is to gaze at secret papers. Powell made a similar point in Peeping Tom, where the psychiatrist expresses his desire to see any unpublished papers by the father of the troubled killer. His eager anticipation of this treat seems to blind him to the fact he has been interviewing a killer.
The preview version of Topaz ran over 140 minutes and concluded with a duel. The test secreenings produced such a negative reaction from audiences that the film was recut to tighten the action and a new suicide ending was concocted from existing footage. Michel Piccoli plays the friend of a married couple here as he did in Buñuel's Belle de Jour from two years earlier. It was a film which Hitchcock much admired. In that film Piccoli longs to make the chic amateur prostitute wife his mistress. Perversely, she evades his advances. In Hitchcock's thriller, the chic wife leaves her husband for the duplicitous Piccoli. Both films feature Piccoli with the couple on a sporting holiday: in Buñuel they ski, in Hitchcock they shoot - though we see this only in a photograph on a desk. This may also look back to the earlier version on The Man Who Knew Too Much, which features a complaisant husband who seems to encourage his wife's flirtation with Pierre Fresnay.
There are two shared women in Topaz, both of whom the hero loses. His trip to Cuba gains him the desired proof of the growing Russian arsenal there but it causes the death of his mistress. Meanwhile, at home, we are to understand I think that his wife has been unfaithful for some time. Her warnings have gone unheeded and his Cuban trip results in her leaving André for her lover Piccoli, who is clearly a double-agent in personal as well as professional life. She has demonstrated her knowledge of things a wife ought not to know but the gossip is attributed to her butcher or chattering diplomatic wives.
Communists, Russian and Cuban, are viewed with disdain throughout. The defector turns out to be sour and difficult with his handlers, later developing a taste for the leisured lifestyle and luxury he now enjoys. The Cuban cadres are also seen as enjoying an expansive lifestyle despite their military dress.
Echoes of other Hitchcock works abound. The horrid birds are also spies and betrayers here - their flight with discarded pieces of baguette gives away the couple spying on the military. Later, the camera is returned for processing inside a raw chicken, suggesting that only when dead can they be trusted? Maybe also foreshadowing the deaths that this project will cause.
Names like McKittrick and Carlotta are bandied around to remind of earlier works. The obstructive buses recall the closing doors at the start of North by North West. The Royal Danish Porcelain Showroom has a fine display of birds too, though the dropped statuette may be a mildly erotic subject such as spilt milk?
Topaz is constructed as a Symphony in several movements. The first depicts the defection of the dour Russian family. The second treats their arrival in Washington DC and debriefing. New York forms the focus for the photographing of the Cuban papers in Harlem and the visit of the daughter & son-in-law of the French diplomats. We move to Cuba for the central panel, then back to Washington. The final section takes place in Paris with the uncovering of the spy-ring.
Thursday, 18th May, 2006, pm
138.XCD: Gramophone on CD, June 2006, 50'22"
Thursday, 18th May, 2006, pm into Friday, 19th May, 2006, am
288.V: L. Carra: Shakespeare: Antony & Cleopatra, 1981, 179'49"
A poundstore purchase, together with a Lear, from a company called Quantum Leap. In fact they seem to be American-produced on video by a firm called Bard Productions with a mixture of British & American actors. The credits give a date of 1983 but the imdb and allmovie sites give the date as 1981. The quality is, well of video quality and the camera-work very simple. Scenes are shot from middle distance or medium close-up. There are some ugly edits.
The production is austere on a single, architectural stage without further sets. Costumes are mainly undistracting. The Antony was Timothy Dalton, who came to more general notice afterwards as James Bond. He is notably good as the virile vain and deluded Antony of the first half of the play. Not much sign of softness or effeminacy here. As disillusion begins to break his shell, the performance becomes more general and histrionic in its gestures. It is an efficient and decent performance, though the death scene could move us more. Lynn Redgrave as Cleopatra has big frizzy hair and a toothy schoolgirlish sportiveness. Her big bones suggest arrested development: at times I was reminded of the girlish Queen Elizabeth who featured in the Blackadder comedies. We may be used to fruitier actresses in the rôle who make more of the regal elements to Cleopatra's character but her behaviour does suggest a vain and frivolous child, until she is finally cornered by Caesar. Redgrave does rise to the death scene very well and the advantage of her performance is that the relations with her devoted playmates seem genuinely warm.
Enobarbus is very well played, as he needs to be. Caesar isn't - an unsympathetic part, in truth, but should we resent his appearances so much? The chill of the man can be more telling if the bearing is more that of an official than a soldier.
Some jarring and very diverse American accents in the smaller rôles include a Pompey straight in from The Godfather. The pace of the performance is commendably swift with a bare minimum of music or extraneous atmospheric effects. The focus is kept on the words throughout. Granville Barker reminds us that in the Folio there are no Act and Scene divisions in this play and that the customary Five Act structure imposed on it is unhelpful. The video has a single break after eighty-five minutes, Antony's decline setting in after the interval, emphasising how extensive and luxurious the play is in catastrophe.
The cassette case refers to Anthony (sic) in the title and throughout the blurb.
Friday, 19th May, 2006 pm
3141.S: Brahms: Symphony No.4, Columbia SO, B. Walter, 1960, 42'26"
3131.S: Britten: Violin Concerto, Grumliková, Prague SO, P. Maag, 1968, 31'40"
3147.M: Delibes: Coppélia, orchestral suite, Paris Opera, A. Cluytens, 1957, 25'48"
The Brahms, a blue-label CBS pressing from the sixties sounded to have terrible surface noise but this turned out to be tape hiss and a high-level recording. With a strong treble cut and small bass boost, the disc gave a good account of itself. I think the symphony would benefit from a tougher approach to the Finale but elesewhere there is much to admire. Probably the Second and Third are the highlights of this late Brahms set from Walter.
The Supraphon disc of Britten's Concerto is visually fine but sounds worn. A treble cut helps. The distortion is at its worst in the First and Last movements. A pity as the performance is very persuasive. Both this work and the Brahms Symphony end in a Passacaglia. It is said that Britten used to listen to Brahms periodically to remind himself how much he hated his music.
The Delibes was disappointing due to the condition of the disc. There are some visible marks and bad distortion. The start is especially bad. I have another mono copy of this Columbia somewhere. It ought to be better. Still, it is always good to hear French orchestras in this kind of repetoire. There are moments which make me think of Bizet but as this score dates from 1870, any influence may have been the other way.
4889.M: Handel: Concerti Grossi, Op.6 Nos.1 & 2, S. German CO, H. Tiligant, 13'08" + 12'23"
0002.E: Handel: Concerti Grossi, Op.6 Nos.1 & 2, Boyd Neel CO, B. Neel, 13'11" + 13'04"
A chance to hear contrasting approaches. There is an emotional catch, almost a lump-in-the-throat feeling to the 1950 version from Boyd Neel. The German version - surely part of a complete Ariola? set of which only the first six saw the light of day here on a pair of World Records Recorded Music Circle discs. The harpsichord tinkles away ineffectually but the string sound is sweet and unaffected. Recorded in the early sixties, they show a move towards a more objective style in the Baroque.
Saturday, 20th May, 2006 am
151.V: F. Lang: M, 1931, video from BBC broadcast, September 1998, 101'12"
Caught between organized criminals and a very procedural police force, Peter Lorre is the only fully human being in M - apart from the unfortunate mother at the start. He hardly features at all in the first half of the movie. We see his face in the mirror then we see the various ways in which society organizes itself to entrap him. As he is run to ground like a trapped animal, it is surprising we should feel any pity for him as a child murderer. He makes his own plea to the kangaroo court - he was unable to help himself. His appointed defence counsel argues that he deserves to be pitied as a sick man rather than punished. The various objections are those which would be raised today in identical terms more or less. It is only the arrival of the police which prevent a lynching and in the real trial, we see the judge put on his black hat.
Blackly comic at times, M introduces us to Inspector Lohmann, heckled at his entrance into a low-life bar as Fatty Lohmann. Our own age would demand that this sort of subject should be treated with high solemnity and I very much doubt if any modern actors would consent to the unflattering under-the-desk shot which ahows us more than we need to know about Lohmann socks and belly.
This old BBC print is longer than some, I gather but rather shorter than the 114 minutes at which the film premiered. It needs the brightness turning well down and even then there is a lot of variation in illumination. I don't know if the negatives have survived but M certainly deserves a thorough restoration. Less monumental than some of Lang's other movies, it more closely approaches realism but without the romanticism of Metropolis. It is a world much closer to Brecht in its community of beggars. A highly influential and haunting work, M deserves its high reputatation. So many of the hard-edged urban qualities we associate with America were already present here - I especially like the advanced alarm system, which requires the night-watchmen to clock on at intervals.
The interest in writings by madmen was to be expanded in The Testament of Doctor Mabuse two years later. Here Peter Lorre taunts the police and papers in the manner of Jack the Ripper. A style imitated by the hoaxer who led our modern proceduralist police by the nose in their search for the Yorkshire Ripper. Though we have a scene of mothers in mourning at the end of Lorre's trial, there is nothing in the rest of the film to match the emotional impact of the opening. The wind blowing the drying washing in a loft, the table set for a meal the child will not eat. Lang's use of montage here is masterly.
Saturday, 20th May, 2006 pm
3145.M: Elgar: 5 Pomp & Circumstance Marches, Philharmonia, J. Barbirolli, HMV, 1963 - 66, 29'03"
3136.M: Tchaikovsky: Violin Concerto, N. Milstein, Boston SO, C. Munch, RCA, 1957, 30'48"
3143 - 44.M: Mahler: 7th Symphony, Berlin Radio SO, H. Rosbaud, Live, Saga (Urania) 1952 c, 81'01"
Barbirolli's Pomp & Circumstance set was recorded in at least two sessions between which the Philharmonia became the New Philharmonia. There are some untidy details as we expect with this conductor but there is much affection lavished on these pieces. The popular Nos.1 & 4 were recorded first and the more interesting minor key ones later. Though this was a mono pressing, it was in good order and the sound was rich and clear.
Milstein's Tchaikovsky was the highlight of the evening's listening. The First Movement has its wiry moments but the Slow Movement and Finale are very fine. Munch gives forthright support, relishing the Polonaise rhythms in the First Movement. There are more hushed readings of the Slow Movement but this has great dignity and inwardness. In the Finale, Milstein is not afraid to dirty up his golden tone so that the whiff of Russian spirits and sweat detected by Hanslick are well in evidence. Yet he does nothing unmusical. This version appeared in mono only in the UK in the early sixties. There are at least two other versions by Milstein, a later one with Abbado I also have. This disc seemed to be in good order but the playing time is very short for a full LP. Perhaps this helped the levels.
Rosbaud's ancient Mahler 7th was taken from a live concert and probably dates from the early fifties. It came out in 1953 in America but this domestic issue by Saga dates from 1961. The sound is very restricted and the symphony is fitted on three sides. The performance is under-rehearsed. Rosbaud makes very heavy weather of the second movement, treating the main theme as another of Mahler's Funeral Marches. There are many fudged details, especially where the brass should cry out over the full orchestra. Rosbaud does not give this problematic work the tautness it really needs and I found it something of a trial to sit through this set of discs. I gather the Kindertotenlieder on Side Four are altogether better.
Sunday, 21st May, 2006 am
268.D: W. Herzog: Woyzeck, 1978, 77'18" with trailer, 3'09"
Herzog seems to have remained faithful to Büchner's play-fragments, which are the earliest example of German Expressionism. Kinski is well cast as the put-upon soldier and Eva Mattes inhabits the rôle of Marie with total conviction. The film is set in an idyllic Czechoslovakian town, which serves to underline the alienation of the horrific tale. Herzog employs long takes and the film was completed in just a few days. Once voted the world's most Fortean movie, Woyzeck is an intense and unsettling experience. This is the only feature film in these Herzog sets without a commentary by the director - My Best Fiend being essentially a commentary itself.
Sunday, 21st May, 2006 pm
253.D: C. Chaplin: The Face on the Barroom Floor, 1914, 11'41"
253.D: C. Chaplin: Recreation, 1914, 6'29"
The Face on the Barroom Floor was a ballad once sufficiently well-known as a recitation to be worth a parody in 1914. Here Chaplin seems initially enchanted by the sight of a sailor's arse. When a melee threatens to break out, he tells his tale. The scene changes to an artist's studio where he is painting the portrait of a fat man. His own mistress is oddly smitten by the portly sitter and leaves him, her farewell letter pinned to the portrait. He takes out his spite on the picture, first poking out its eye then destroying it completely. Back in the bar, he is further enebriated by the sympathy drinks and begins a work of art on the pub floor with chalk. He scrawls a childish diagramatic face and falls over.
Recreation is an episode of mashing and brick-throwing which is mercifully short. The print is very poor and we are thanful to see the sight of water, which signals the end is nigh.
Monday, 22nd May, 2006, am
300.V: A. Hitchcock: Under Capricorn, 1949, 112'00"
Monday, 22nd May, 2006, pm
224 - 25.CD: A. Berg: Wozzeck, NYPO, Mitropoulos, Live, 1951, 87'41"
Mack Harrell makes a noble Wozzeck. Whether nobility was intended by author or composer is an altogether bigger question. Certainly Büchner's tragic fragments are respectfully treated in Germany. Neither Herzog nor Berg seem to depart far from the text that has come down to us. Though formally ingenious, Berg wanted his work viewed as drama first and foremost. Its compact nature and human interest can carry the audience without difficulty. The demands on the cast - especially over the vexed question of the sprechstimme - are much greater.
This 1951 live performance at Carnegie Hall was carfefully prepared. I heared it last as a teenager from some ancient Philips discs. These CDs were part of the Columbia Masterworks series which reproduced something of the original nineteen fifties feel with retro-styled royal blue labels on the records and facsimile sleeves. All very pleasing and the sound was satisfactory for the date. Probably Berg's score benefits from a more forensic treatment but he may well have preferred this set for its authentic sense of drama.
Like many a Chaplin short, in lieu of resolution the expressionists reached for saturation.
156.CD: D. Strahan: Take me to your Leader, 25 songs, 1960 - 74, remixed 2001, 74'14"
253.D: C. Chaplin: The Masquerader, 1914, 9'20"
Thrown out of the studio as a man, Chaplin regains entry as a female. Since the sea is a long way off, he is thrown in a convenient well at the end.
Monday, 22nd May, 2006, pm into Tuesday, 23rd May, 2006 am
253.D: C. Chaplin: The Good-for-Nothing, 1914, 13'34"
Cruelty lies at the heart of this comedy. Left in charge of a gouty invalid, Chaplin prefers to drink. Mayhem ensues.
Tuesday, 23rd May, 2006 am
253.D: C. Chaplin: The Rounders, 1914, 9'31"
275.D: A. Hitchcock: Lifeboat, 1944, 92'54"
The Rounders were something akin to the Rotary or Round Table. Two drunks come home to fight with their wives. When their fights cross the corridor, the men discover they are lodge brothers and set out for more lubrication.
Lifeboat was damned in its day for political reasons. Whether its message was basically one of propaganda or of humanitarianism, the picture was certainly one of Hitchcock's self-set problem pieces. Here he restricts the action to a lifeboat adrift. While the motley crew do not reach the extreme of eating each other, we get practically every other human activity from kissing to cards and amputation.
The structures are not mathematically determined but Hitchcock makes his drama work like clockwork. To praise it for its fluidity might seem an obvious pun. Each shot seems to ring the changes on his self-imposed limitations. He squeezes every drop out of the subject. Despite it being excellent in every way, I find myself admiring the movie more than loving it. Maybe it really needs to soak in.
Tuesday, 23rd May, 2006 pm
3145.M: E. Elgar: Elegy, Sospiri & Froissart, New Philharmonia, J. Barbirolli, 1966, 23'39"
3143 - 44.M: Mahler: Kindertotenlieder, L. Lail, Berlin Radio SO, R. Kleinert, 1957 c, 22'22"
3147, M: Delibes: Sylvia, Ballet Suite, Paris Opéra, A. Cluytens, 1957 c, 17'26"
3146.S: Sibelius: 5th Symphony, Hallé, J. Barbirolli, 1968 c, 32'47"
Though certain French influences on Elgar are often vaguely alluded to, we have in Sylvia a prototype for the Pomp & Circumstance marches. The Bacchus scene begins with an assertive downward string motif and rhythm very similar to the First of the Marches. The wistful Trio like sections are also Elgarian. The very French horns on this disc may have caused criticism at the time but now they have vanished we can allow ourselves a little nostalgia. They sound almost like the saxophone at times!
Saturday, 27th May, 2006, am
300.V: A. Hitchcock: Under Capricorn, 1949, 112'
Third viewing - detailed note-taking session with frequent pauses and repeats to complete substantial internet essay on the film, first drafted in April.
Saturday, 28th May, 2006, am
126.V: S. Kubrick: Eyes Wide Shut, 1999, 152'30"
126 & 125.V: G. Massironi: Dear Antonioni, documentary, BBC-Arena, 1997. fragment, 46'05"
A second chance for the Kubrick but I regretted it. This is a dreadful film! Granted it's emptiness may be deliberate but so what? The plot might have made a half decent Val Lewton horror if made about 1946 in black and white leaving out the explicit and very dull sex and kept down to about 65 minutes.
The fragment of Antonioni documentary was hagiographical. The beginning has been overtaped and the films dealt with here are those from Blow Up onwards. Some interesting things in it but too irritating by half.
Wednesday, 31st May, 2006, pm
306.V: D. Thompson: Silent Britain, BBC-BFI documentary, 2006, 88'30"
Fascinating glimpse of early British movies. In a sensible world it would be accompanied by the opportunity to see all these things complete. As it is three have been drawn from the archive: Asquith's A Cottage on Dartmore, Elvey's 1927 version of Hindle Wakes and a movie called Piccadilly. Stupidly I caught only the first of these.