dreverativy Reviews

Tales of the Unexpected: A Picture of a Place (1980) Season 3, Episode 2

The End of the Road

[9 March 2007]

This is a light, vaguely entertaining tale made for Anglia and set on a bleak Suffolk farmhouse, about an art forger. Messrs Maynard, Troughton and Sallis provide capable support, and Roald Dahl makes a brief introduction. It also happens to be just about the last appearance of one of the great stars of her era.

It was shown as the final part of the Jessie Matthews season at the NFT in London. The audience was also treated to a feature produced by Edward Mirzoeff (best known for his work with Jessie's near contemporary, John Betjeman), plus a series of clips from "The Good Old Days", "This Is Your Life", etc. in which Leonard Sachs and Eamon Andrews provide support.

The whole collection of clips and off-cuts was depressing to a degree. In the Mirzoeff programme (dating from 1986) we see that Matthews' ashes had been deposited in an unmarked grave in Ruislip churchyard (the oversight has now been corrected). She seems to have wafted through life stirring up a great deal of enmity in the process. Hardly anyone had a good word to say for her - or if they did, the praise was (tellingly) equivocal. The contributions of her adopted daughter (in particular), her agent and her rival Chili Bourchier ooze contempt. This is perhaps understandable: her daughter has been cut out of her (no doubt modest) will, and seemed to be living in cramped conditions - she seemed to find her 'mother' almost physically repulsive (it was virtually a 'Mommie Dearest' performance); her agent was prepared to attribute to her all the deficiencies of a star, including the warped and deluded mindset; the remarkable Ms Bourchier was still raw with the affair between Matthews and her husband, and decried her attempts at bettering her accent.

Nor was Matthews much helped by her 'friends' (her agent remarked that there were precious few of these). Her brother remarked that she had thought her life pointless; Lord and Lady Elwyn-Jones (a very entertaining couple) emphasised her ill-health (Elwyn-Jones had been a not overly distinguished lord chancellor in 1974-9); her neighbours spoke of how tiring (and therefore by implication how tiresome) her late night calls and egotistical behaviour had been; her nurse, had largely forgotten about her, but obviously found her quite an effort.

In the final analysis her reputation rests upon a tiny repertoire of quite good songs (mainly by Rogers and Hart) and two or three British films that almost reached Hollywood standards in terms of quality and spectacle. The clips from TV shows revolved around "Over My Shoulder", "Dancing on the Ceiling", "When You've Got a Little Springtime in Your Heart", "Look for the Silver Lining", and not much more. Her heyday on stage and screen was 1927/28 to 1936/37, which is quite brief, and her days of film stardom (1933-37) were shorter still, even by the standards of female leads of that era. The period following 1938 is a virtual blank, save "Mrs Dale's Diary", which was almost an afterthought and not thought strong enough for Radio 2 to preserve. Her health issues aside, she was not much helped by the parlous state of Gainsborough and Gaumont and by the virtual disappearance of homegrown musicals from the West End. Matthews' career compares invidiously to Ginger Rogers (although considered by some to be a better dancer - a persuasive argument, but by no means definitive), much as Jack Buchanan does when put alongside Fred Astaire.

Fans of Matthews (of whom I am one) have noted her attractive mixture of star presence and innocence. Actually, the appearance of innocence - and her tendency to wear a wide-eyed, startled look - also indicates a chronic insecurity - hence the lifetime of 'starry' behaviour, and the recurrent breakdowns. Her weight was, somewhat predictably, the barometer of her vulnerability. She started to gain pounds after her miscarriage and once Sonnie Hale began to direct her. Once the roles dried up with the war (when her ethereal, lissome, gamine-like qualities became passé) she became quite plump. The shots taken of her recording 'Mrs Dale' show greater self-discipline, but during her appearances in the 1970s see seems to stagger across the stage (her voice weakened) like the ghost of Florrie Forde. It is only around 1980 (when the cancer was starting to tighten its grip) that she shrank greatly. The appearance alongside her, of a very well-preserved, though virtually bankrupt, Anna Neagle (her former understudy) in "This Is Your Life" made this physical 'fall from grace' all the more painful. Matthews could so easily have played the roles that Neagle enjoyed in the 1940s - only she had no Herbert Wilcox to rescue her.

Matthews is the acme of the tragic star. What a waste!

The Fall (1969)

Hymn to 1968

[9 March 2007]

This is a problematic documentary. It depicts certain scenes in New York City between October 1967 and March 1968, shot by the independent film maker, Peter Whitehead. It is a very personal documentary, and Whitehead appears in a large number of scenes, and we hear his lengthy ruminations on the state of the United States and the war in Vietnam (in actual fact his commentary is frequently inaudible, as it has to compete with rock music that is being played at a higher volume than his voice).

The film contains several striking scenes: of an elevator (and elevator shaft), of a montage inspired by Marilyn Monroe, of debates between NYC residents, and the occupation of Columbia University buildings.

However, the negatives outweigh the positives. The film is often maddeningly tedious and prolix. Whilst we are forewarned that it is a series of vignettes, they are too frequently disconnected. The quality of the camera work (and of the print) is highly variable. The various scenes are supposed to revolve about the subject of Vietnam - and they do, to some extent, but then the effect is dissipated by wandering off to art galleries. There is far, far too much of Whitehead himself and his cavorting with a not overly interesting model in her flat. No doubt some viewers will be left wondering what was actually going on in NYC whilst he was gazing at the TV or filming the pouting of his girlfriend. Some of his previous films had been devoted to the world of rock and fashion in London (a real blind alley), and he can't throw it off his predilection for it - worse, he tries to integrate the worlds of fashion and politics. The effect is quite unhappy, although it is possible to argue that in the mid-1960s these worlds did indeed elide. Unfortunately, Whitehead also comes across as a caricature of a modish, floppy haired public schoolboy and varsity man. And to continue in an ad hominem vein, there is a scene in which a piano is smashed and a live chicken is first rubbed and then dashed brutally against the wreckage, which is acutely painful to watch. It is hoped that Whitehead's subsequent career as a falconer was in part an atonement for his complicity in that lamentable episode.

Much of what is interesting in this film - the scenes of the peace march in Washington, the riot at the Pentagon, the threnody of Robert Lowell - seems to have been taken from the TV. I cannot be sure of that - but it looks as though it was second hand material. This can be excused only on the ground that the great majority of the American people watched the events of 1968 unfold via the tube, and that Whitehead was sharing that experience. However, the footage of Robert Kennedy at a political meeting seems authentic.

I think that Whitehead would have done better to have spent his entire time in Central Park. That is where he obtained some of his best material: middle aged matrons complaining about the excessive coverage of hippies; an orthodox priest fulminating against communism at a meeting of the Russian community; a woman decrying the expenditure on ordnance; 'flower children' playing in a pond...

However, the real meat was taken at Morningside Heights, and in particular at Hamilton Hall and the Seth Low 'Library'. There is an interesting scene in which a piper plays in a stairwell whilst a fellow protester dances a reel, and we do get a little feel for how the sit-in changed from being fairly placid to anarchic and then violent as the NYPD moved in. The treatment is quite one-sided - no attempt is made to see the Columbia sit-in from the viewpoint of the University authorities (though we do see a couple of nervous chaplains with first aid armbands). This is quite predictable, as the sit-in was largely a self-indulgent affair by the radical section of the student body. The violence of the police shocked many hitherto complacent New Yorkers (who had associated the political violence of the time with the south and Newark), but sympathies were not entirely with the protesters. I dimly recall Alistair Cooke (admittedly something of an establishment figure, but formerly on the liberal left) writing of his dismay at the sight of president Grayson Kirk's office in the Seth Low Library, and of all his books having been torn and trashed. What sort of sentient, humane protesters wreck a library? Whitehead remarks, very acutely, that opposition to Vietnam had become an article of faith amongst everyone under the age of 25, irrespective of the merits or demerits of American involvement - there was an absence of genuine argument amongst the young themselves. Rage and intolerance had infected the student population (arguably the most pampered in history), which then preceded to act in a monolithic, almost fascistic manner. This line of argument is one of the many threads with which Whitehead toys, and then discards.

Independent Lens: Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room (2005) Season 8, Episode 22

Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room

[1 January 2007]

I saw this impressive documentary during its short run at London's Barbican Centre in mid-2006. It was roughly the same time that the trial of Kenneth Lay and Jeff Skilling was coming to a climax. The production values are high and the interviewees were very articulate and credible. Unlike other reviewers, I can't say I've yet read the book.

In retrospect it seems that it was Skilling and not Lay who was most culpable for the debacle that occurred. As the film progresses it is clear that Lay became an increasingly marginal figure in the Frankenstein's monster of a corporation that he had created. He seems to have been reduced to the role of a cheer-leader and front man. Lay may have suffered from moral infirmity, but then how many great business leaders are whiter than white? The problem with Lay is that I believe his concept for Enron's business was based upon a serious misconception: that energy (i.e., the supply of electricity, which in this instance must be differentiated from the raw commodities - coal, natural gas, etc. - that create power) can be traded like most other, tangible goods. Lay assumed that an efficient market could be created for electricity and he advocated the abdication of the state from the regulation and supply of electricity. However, the electricity 'market' was infested with jurisdictional issues, never mind the fact that supply is unevenly distributed and subject to inherent engineering problems (which is itself both a cause and a consequence of state intervention). Moreover, Lay's ambition (worthy in itself) was to create a global market, but on the international level the jurisdictional and technical problems were even more severe than in the domestic U.S. market. The uneven and problematic nature of the supply of electricity, and the fact that Lay had to get his business up and running meant that from the start Enron was preoccupied with the exploitation of arbitrage opportunities - i.e., technical and price differentials across exclusive and overlapping boundaries. Of course almost every trading company does just that, but in the case of Enron this meant dealing almost exlusively in the exploitation of bottlenecks, blockages and other inefficiencies in supply, which had the effect of seriously exacerbating these inefficiencies. This was the root cause of the moral hazard and corruption that was to follow. As the ideological climate of the 1980s and 1990s supported deregulation (and Enron encouraged that trend), and as the electricity market had been comparatively neglected by economists and policy-makers, a lot of bad policy decisions were made as governments ceded control of supply to the markets. Enron, having chosen (by default) the side of darkness - of inefficient deregulation (as in California) as the best way of making money in the absence of a perfect market - soon found itself morally compromised. The other reason why Lay's idea wasn't squashed from the outset was that this was the era of the 'new paradigm', the doctrinaire belief in the perfectibility of markets and the neoliberal assumption that state intervention is always bad for consumers. Lay's failure to serve any time in prison (due to Providential intervention) was therefore - I think - fair, although his sanctimonious denial of responsibility was a further, self-inflicted blow to his reputation. Enron might just have worked if no government anywhere played a role in the supply of electricity, but that is probably never going to happen. Lay was therefore: (a) a cynical opportunist, or (b) a deluded prophet and fantasist who was far too far ahead of the curve, or (c) both.

No, the people at fault in Enron were Skilling (a particularly odious individual with no genuine sense of self-knowledge, and who continues to evade real responsibility for his actions), and his minion Andy Fastow. These two individuals hijacked the company and made the disaster irretrievably inevitable, rather than merely probable. It was Skilling's pseudo-Darwinian complex that handed the company over to the traders. I don't doubt that traders are useful, up to a point, but they ought always to be kept under close control, whereas in Enron's case, Skilling goaded them on. The bug-eyed Enron traders who were interviewed here were a particularly disagreeable lot. Skilling grafted onto Lay's silly idea the notion that as the company was not really dealing with tangibles (redundant Indian power plants aside) its losses could be placed off-balance sheet in shell companies with funny names without too many issues arising, together with the infamous 'mark to market' stratagem. How could we blame him for doing this? Isn't it what banks do by 'securitising' mortgages so that they have little or no credit risk and can therefore lend with abandon to sub-prime borrowers for the sake of capturing market share? Wasn't Skilling simply using the same assumptions that are inherent in fractional reserve banking? The only detail that he forgot - fatally - was that Enron wasn't a bank and could therefore be allowed to fail. Skilling should have got a much longer prison term - not because of the fraud he perpetrated - but because that sort of appalling, hubristic arrogance needs to be punished severely as a deterrent to other moral derelicts who find themselves in positions of power they don't deserve.

It's a pity that the creators of this excellent film didn't interview the other authors of the debacle: the bankers, fund managers, politicians, economists, journalists, philosophers and regulators who made this perversion of capitalism possible by promoting a flawed concept of a liberal economy, and then telling us that there are no real alternatives when it goes painfully awry.

The Street of Forgotten Men (1925)

The Street of Forgotten Men

[31 December 2006]

This is a fairly pedestrian melodrama. However, it does showcase the talents of an otherwise forgotten English born performer, Percy Marmont (as Easy Money Charlie) and his engaging ward/'daughter', Mary Brian (as Fancy Vanhern).

The story has a political message - the end of the Great War had led to the return of a great many servicemen, many of whom became unemployed when the postwar boom turned sour (in 1920-21). A number of these were wounded. However, because of America's comparatively brief participation in the war effort, there were many more able bodied unemployed ex-soldiers than there were disabled (certainly the ratio of able bodied to disabled was far greater than in France, Britain or Germany). Public sympathy for returned soldiers was rather limited, and this caused a great deal of bitterness. This meant that able bodied ex-servicemen had sometimes to resort to impostures, and over time these had the effect of increasing public suspicion of any form of mendicancy by disabled people - whether or not they suffered from any real disability. This story plays with that theme, although the war is never mentioned.

There is the usual interesting 1920s exterior footage - here we get the chance to see what I imagine to be a genuine New York Easter Parade from St. Patrick's Cathedral.

This film is only remembered today because it marks the Paramount screen debut of Louise Brooks (credited as a 'moll'). She had impressed executives Walter Wanger and Townsend Martin by her performances at the Ziegfeld Follies and encouraged her to have a go in this picture, directed by the autocratic, but very capable Herbert Brenon. However, her appearance is not especially impressive.

Even so, Marmont, Brian and John Harrington (as Bridgeport White-Eye, a phoney whose imposture becomes a reality) play well together and with feeling. It may not be to the taste of an audience that has long sloughed off any sympathy for outright sentimentality, but if the viewer makes any attempt to reconstruct the mentality of the average cinema attendee of 1925, s/he will find this film rewarding.

The Dead (1987)

Snow Was General All Over Ireland

[31 December 2006]

"Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland. It was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills, falling softly on the Bog of Allen and, father westward, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves. It was falling, too, upon every part of the lonely churchyard on the hill where Michael Furey lay buried. It lay thickly drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns. His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead."

I think that few endings are as fine, as transcendent as that penned by Joyce in 1914. It rivals the final paragraphs of Sir Thomas Browne's "Hydriotaphia" (A Discourse on Urn Burial) for pure sublimity. Tony Huston chose to quote it in full at the end of this remarkable adaptation of the novella contained within Joyce's brilliant, dissection of Irish society. "The Dead" is easily one of the best films made in the last two or so decades of the twentieth century; it is a pearl amidst swine.

The entire cast work with (and therefore in certain senses, against) each other in an impeccable manner. The direction is consistent and steady. The cinematography is respectful. The art direction is restrained and the period detail sure. The story is allowed to speak for itself and to carry itself at its own measured pace. Although it is little more than 80 minutes, we feel as though we have lived through every part of an Epiphany party than might have lasted for several hours or so. In most readings of Joyce I have been conscious of the time contained within a story passing at a natural rate (the effect is achieved with an horologists' care in "Ulysses" for example). The film is therefore a tribute to Joyce, much as it is for the ailing John Huston, one of Erin's own adopted sons.

I gather than a sixty minute programme was made on the making of "The Dead", and it was shown as part of the John Huston season that has just ended at London's National Film Theatre. Alas, I was unable to attend, but I have read that Huston was very ill at the time it was made, dependent on oxygen cylinders, and often unable to leave his car. He was therefore reliant upon his assistant directors and upon his son (Tony) and daughter (Angelica, as Gretta Conroy, one of her finest roles). This may have been a cathartic experience as I gather that relations between the very demanding father and daughter had been distant for some time - the experience of making this film led to a final reconciliation. Perhaps it was wrong for Huston, with his lungs wrecked, to leave the clear, dry air of Mexico for the dank, foetid vapours of London and Dublin (although I'm not sure that he actually did any of the exterior scenes in Ireland). Whatever the medical merits, the artistic result clearly vindicated his decision.

Many of the stories in "Dubliners" are concerned with the sterility and stolidity of Irish society: 'The Sisters' (the reference to Fr. Flynn's 'paralysis' is apt), 'A Painful Case', 'A Mother', etc. Gabriel Conroy (a superlative Donal McCann) surveys the prospect of the party arranged by two elderly maiden aunts, and surmises that most of those assembled are, one way or the other, half-dead. Then, stung by his wife's lament for the passing of her original (only?) love, he understands he himself, with his own want of feeling, of passion, of emotional engagement, is afflicted by that same malaise. Is Ireland dead or is it merely sleeping? Will it - as Molly Ivors (an electric Maria McDermottroe) sincerely hopes - awake when the British yoke is cast off, and it ceases to be 'John Bull's other island'? Gabriel is sceptical - like Joyce himself, he would rather travel to France than Galway (where Michael Furey lies buried by the shores of Loch Corrib at Oughterard). Molly enjoins Gabriel, a London hack, to learn Gaelic. Gabriel almost hunches his shoulders - the people of the Pale have given the same shrug to the outer reaches of Connacht and Munster for centuries (only now that residential property prices in Kerry and Clare have scaled the heights of those in Surrey and Berkshire are attitudes starting to adjust). Joyce shrugs too - but the suggestion that Ireland is only blanketed in snow, and not deadened by permafrost, suggests that he still has hope for his nation.

There are no false notes in this film, no mis-steps. Even Tony Huston's interpolation of Lady Gregory's ode to love is woven seamlessly into the script, and enhanced it brilliantly (thanks to the excellent recital by Sean McClory as Mr Grace). The entire cast delivered an outstanding performance, and I should make particular mention of Cathleen Delany as Aunt Julia, Marie Kean as Mrs Malins and Donal Donnelly as her wayward son, Freddy, and lastly Frank Patterson as the bibulous Bartell D'Arcy (a particularly interesting character - at once very Anglican and yet very Irish, and therefore a typical Dublin type, the city being in certain respects an island of unionism and protestantism in a Romish and increasingly republican sea). I mention these actors not because they are superior to the others, but because they illuminate particular aspects of this besetting malaise that interest me. Of these, the most significant is Aunt Julia. It is she whom Gabriel sees in her coffin, and there is something in her indomitable rendition of 'Arrayed for the Bridal' the beautiful, resolute, yet curiously myopic eyes set in a failing face, that typify the confused mixture hope and desolation that 'The Dead' represents. A stellar performance and a fitting epitaph to one of the last and greatest of old Hollywood.

Alice (1988)

Alice

[31 December 2006]

This is a near-perfect version of Lewis Carroll's tale about the girl whom he loved. I have a particular interest in Carroll, as I lived close to his college rooms at university, and Alice Liddell herself moved (and lived out much of her life) about half a mile from where I live in west Kent. Alice was the daughter of Henry Liddell, dean of Christ Church, Oxford (a great post in church and university) and co-editor of Liddell and Scott's "Greek Lexicon", still very much in use today (a wag put it unkindly, 'Two men wrote a lexicon,/ Liddell and Scott./ Scott wrote the lexicon,/ Liddell did not.' Robert Scott was master of Balliol College, Oxford and later dean of Rochester).

The use of stop-animation perhaps impedes the fluidity of the story, and on occasion it is at risk of becoming tedious (but that is perhaps part of the point of the Mad Hatter's Tea Party - moreover, Carroll was not afraid of repetition, as in "The Hunting of the Snark": 'Just the thing said the Snark,/ I have said it once, that alone should encourage the crew./ Just the thing said the Snark,/ I have said it twice,/ What I tell you two times is true.').

In "Alice" Jan Svankmajer continues his outstanding run of animated works: "Dimensions of Dialogue", "Punch and Judy", "Down to the Cellar" and "Jabberwocky" (also by Carroll). There are a few suggestions that this Alice is set somewhere in Mitteleuropa, and not in the deanery at Christ Church, but this in no way detracts from the story or the message (insofar as there is one). Carroll (and Svankmajer) had a genuine feeling for the psychology of children - Carroll because of his psychological infantilism - also manifested in misplaced mathematical obsessions; Svankmajer because of his keen understanding of the nightmare as the transposition of a childhood experience into the thought world of the adult.

After a while you realise that there is no music, but this accentuates the weirdness of the film, and heightens the concentration of the viewer. The very seriousness, the austerity of the presentation heightens its dream-like quality. A wonderful achievement by Svankmajer, the photographer Svatopluk Maly and editor Marie Zemanova. Watch out too for the bewigged frog footman, with his enormous, phallic, tongue.

Overland Stage Raiders (1938)

Overland Stage Raiders

[31 December 2006]

What is curious about this picture is that the main protagonists: John Wayne (Stony Brooks - ha! ha! no?), Ray Corrigan (as Tucson Smith) and Max Terhune (as Lullaby Joslin) are actually very keen to liquidate their traditional existence as chivalrous knights errant on horseback. They actually want to invest in a project that will ensure that their traditional livelihood is destroyed. The project is to transport mail, gold and passengers across the high sierra by aeroplane. This will create another disconnect with the land to which these cowboys are rooted. However, they see it as just another investment which will maybe get them off horseback, out of penury and into automobiles.

Odder still is the transposition of other modern technologies into a traditional western. The most obvious instance of this is the use of a bus (though not a Greyhound) as a 'stage'. I only imagine that Republic's props department had a tiny budget and so used a bus because they wanted to save cash on hiring an old stagecoach. So the bandits shoot not at varnished lumber but at steel and chrome. The cowboys are a pretty disparate bunch, and they actually seem to be rather dim. Terhune is accompanied by a dummy called Elmer with whom he engages in unfunny banter (he is not a gifted ventriloquist) - very strange. Almost sit-up-straight-and-goggle-in-amazement strange.

Louise Brooks (as Beth Hoyt) has a wasted role. This was her swansong, and she was not to appear on screen again. Her career had reached a point of no return and she had to give it up, and she was dependent on hand outs from friends. The preceding six or seven years had not been at all kind to her. She looks almost unrecognisable. Her flapper bob has given way to a not overly flattering proto-Veronica Lake cut, and the lipstick is very overdone. Her beauty has vanished, and she lacks credibility as any form of love interest. Wayne is gallant in a pedestrian way and breezes through his part on cruise control.

A curio of scant merit.

Prix de beauté (Miss Europe) (1930)

Prix de Beaute

[31 December 2006]

Beauty prizes became a staple of many a municipality in the decade following the end of the Great War - perhaps they filled a gap left by many of the old throne and altar ceremonies of the ancien regime states that fell in 1918. In fact this beauty prize was set somewhere in northern Spain in 1930, when the Bourbons' were still in charge (just). We get a few brief glimpses of the girls on display, but I am at a loss to know what all the fuss was about.

Opinion seems to be divided as to the merits of this film. That might be because different viewers have been seeing different versions. The one I saw (at London's National Film Theatre) was the silent version, but someone (I think the pianist, Stephen Horne) had interpolated a sound recording at the very end. It was a scratchy, haunting Edith Piaf. By this time Mr Horne had stopped playing. Lucienne Garnier (Louise Brooks) had stopped breathing, and the audience was left with no sound but that of Piaf as, on the screen, the occupants of a private cinema rushed about the body of Brooks beneath the movement of her recorded screen test. I don't know whether I have explained this well enough, but for me it was the best ending that I had seen (of a silent film) since I watched Anthony Asquith's "Shooting Stars" several years ago.

The screenplay, by director Augusto Genina (and colleagues) seldom rises above the level of a soap opera, but this is beside the point. Having 'sold' Brooks to German audiences, G. W. Pabst (in league with Rene Clair) wished to do the same to the French. As 1930 was the end of the road for silent cinema - and as Brooks was no linguist - Pabst and Clair had a very narrow window in which to make a profit on Brooks. It didn't really work - French audiences were not quite moved, and Brooks was forced back to America where her reputation as a team player was, to put it mildly, low.

Genina has produced a fine, naturalistic picture, on a subject well suited to his cosmopolitanism. The men in it (Georges Charlia as her dull and possessive fiancée, Andre; Yves Glad as a predatory, blacked up maharajah; Bandini as a randy White Russian playboy-prince) are almost incidental. They are simply walk-on characters that are required to give the film some momentum. For this is almost entirely about Brooks. Henri Langlois aptly likened the film to a lighthouse that only illuminates the audience when Brooks appears on screen, and then relapses into darkness. There are also some interesting shots of Parisians going about their business.

Brooks was seldom sober enough to appreciate how effective she was in this film. Her deportment betrays no awareness that this was her evening. Her cinematic career after 1930 was to be tragic.

Windy Riley Goes Hollywood (1931)

Windy Riley Goes to Hollywood

[31 December 2006]

The sole value of this film is for viewers to wonder how a star like Louise Brooks should have fallen so far so fast. This is a short, made by the poverty row studio Educational Pictures. Brooks appears for at most five minutes out of twenty, and she has almost nothing to say. She seems bemused by the situation - almost as if she is watching herself in her own train wreck. Perhaps she was just drunk.

That aside, this picture has no merit whatever. Jack Shutta as Windy Riley is painfully unamusing. The premiss that he has, due to the machinations of his rivals in a trans-continental road race, ended up in Los Angeles rather than San Francisco, is feeble. Two years earlier Brooks had been earning $1,000 a week for Pabst. Now her earnings on this short were to be paltry (by 1938 they would be a mere $300 for an entire feature). However, she desperately needed all the cash she could get as she had no savings and no credit. Paramount and the other majors had banished her to the cinematic equivalent of Nome.

The only other point worthy of comment is that the 'director' of this flick was Roscoe Arbuckle, masquerading under the knowing name of William B. Goodrich (will be good - geddit?!). Brooks described the experience of working with Arbuckle as 'floating in the arms of a huge doughnut'. The dismal couple were both no doubt intoxicated, and in Arbuckle's case it wasn't just drink. A nadir for both parties.

Pandora's Box (1929)

Pandora's Box

[31 December 2006]

I went into this film with a great weight of expectation, which was crushed by the rather more pedestrian reality. It remains famous chiefly on account of its reputation as a great film (stoked by Kenneth Tynan's famous "New Yorker" article of 1979). However it is not great, only very good.

To begin with it is rather too long - it could have lost thirty minutes or so with little ill effect. It also suffers because the relationship between Lulu (Louise Brooks) and the two main male characters (Fritz Kortner as the elder Schon, the press baron, and Franz Lederer, as his son) lacks real feeling. Not long after her sensational trial - where Lulu poses to great effect, she winds up in London's East End. I found this coda really rather bizarre and perhaps inadequate. There is only perdition, and no redemption to be found in the flop house to which she has condemned herself. Of course G. W. Pabst was to revisit Limehouse, Stepney and Whitechapel in Brecht's "Beggar's Opera". I haven't read Frank Wedekind's two sensationalist Lulu plays, so I don't know whether the screen version is faithful to the original story. The plays ("Erdgeist" - 1895, and "Die Buchse der Pandora" - 1902) scandalised Europe and were, for a long time (even after 1918) only known by reputation. They had the effect of branding Wedekind as 'the least popular major dramatist of the twentieth century' (as Thomas Mann put it).

Everyone performs well (particular mention should be made of Lulu's 'father' - probably pimp - a brilliantly vile and sordid Carl Gotz as Schigolch). The production values are exemplary, and photography (in customary expressionist mode) is as fine as we have come to expect from German films of this era - by Gunther Krampf.

Brooks snubbed Paramount's B. P. Schulberg when her adviser George Marshall (not the general) told her that she could get $1,000 a week with Pabst as opposed to the $750 that Paramount were offering. Unbeknownst to her Marshall had received an offer from the great Flo Ziegfeld for a lead part in "Show Girl". Marshall sent the Follies a letter of refusal from Brooks, which Brooks had never seen or written. Ziegfeld never forgave Brooks this refusal, and handed the part to Ruby Keeler.

Marlene Dietrich desired the part of Lulu, but Pabst felt she wasn't right: "Dietrich was too old and too obvious. One sexy look and the picture would become a burlesque". I think this was right. Brooks has just the right combination of faux-naive innocence and shameless promiscuity. Dietrich looks as though she has been round the block a little too often. Dietrich (who was enraged by the refusal) was also too well known in Germany, whereas Pabst and Nero-Film could engineer a massive publicity campaign on Brooks' behalf because she was said to be a great American star (who hardly anyone had heard of in Europe) and was the Acme edition of a stateside flapper. The market for Dietrich was already saturated. In fact the market for Brooks would become saturated pretty quickly as well. "Pandora's Box" bumped along in Germany, and failed to do well elsewhere. Brooks' career in Europe was destined to be brief.

Battement de coeur (1940)

Battement de Coeur

[30 December 2006]

I wonder whether the idea of a school of pickpockets was an inspiration for Robert Hamer's 1958 "School for Scoundrels". In any event this is a very funny, touching, stylish, lightweight piece of entertainment. It's a shame that it isn't better known in English-speaking countries.

This is definitely a (vanity?) vehicle for the excellent and evergreen Danielle Darrieux, provided by her husband, director Henri Decoin (I suppose in the manner of Anna Neagle and Herbert Willcox). Their marriage was dissolved in 1941, but the preceding six years of her career (they married in 1935) were among her most productive and rewarding. How many actresses alive today were at the peak of their careers before World War II?

This is a retelling of the Cinderella story, with the young diplomat, Pierre de Rougemont (Claude Dauphin, a polished and patient sophisticate) in the role of the prince. Saturnin Fahre (excellent here, as in "Pepe le Moko" and many other films) is a rather more benign version of the wicked stepmother. Indeed, he seems a fairly tolerant and genial crime-master.

It is hard to summarise a film that is essentially about dresses, rocks and glances. There are certainly a number of brilliant set-pieces (notably in the 'schoolroom' and at the embassy ball), but this is really a film about charm, very witty dialogue (thanks to Jean Willeme and Max Colpet) and high production values. A typical, workaday film of the 1930s - therefore far superior to most of what is produced today. It is astonishing to think that this world of whirls and romances was on the cusp of being crushed.

The Novel of Werther (1938)

Le Roman de Werther

[30 December 2006]

The "Sorrows of Young Werther" (1774), a rather hapless and excessively emotional law clerk, is often thought of as the first great German novel. Whether it is or isn't is not important. What is important is that Goethe's epistolary work (no doubt influenced by Samuel Richardson and Laurence Sterne, though probably not Tobias Smollett) had a monumental impact on the development of German romanticism, and on the development of a poetry of feeling, of 'sturm und drang'. It impacted upon almost all forms of humanist endeavour: drama (especially during the 1770s through the work of Lessing), poetry, theology (still the queen of the sciences in late eighteenth century Germany), history, and other categories of belles-lettres. It exploded on the continental literary scene and vaulted its author to the status of a superstar. Thousands of young men committed imitative suicide, and Napoleon kept a copy in his knapsack.

Werther is supposed to have been, like Goethe himself, a junior clerk in the Reichskammersgericht (the imperial supreme court) based in the free upper Rheinish city of Wetzlar. Lotte is essentially Charlotte Buff, Goethe's lost love (in this instance a decent performance by the delightful Annie Vernay).

The story is very well known, and there is no need to repeat any of the details. Pierre Richard-Willm, often derided as rather stiff and wooden is exactly right for this eponymous role. He has a rather vague and abstracted appearance that subverts his looks (he was probably rather old for the part, but gets away with it). The audience can easily scent a loser. In Adam von Hochatten (Jean Galland) we can detect a winner, secure in his status and prospects.

Werther gets lost in drink and in an obsession with James Macpherson's forgery of Ossian. Max Ophuls carries us away in in a state of emotional and romantic resignation and despair to the music of (variously) J. S. Bach, W. F. Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert (very apt, Beethoven and Schubert), and Haydn. The costumes are well done (if a little anachronistic), as is the art direction. Ophuls is able to convey an authentic feeling - if not for 1774, then perhaps 1804. We have for instance a scene with a slightly fustian grand duke (Phillippe Richard), and we are reminded that the old Germany was a mosaic of innumerable petty principalities. Some critics, notably Richard Roud, accused Ophuls of vulgarising this supreme novel. That was perhaps inevitable in any cinematic adaptation. However, this is a very fine effort. The most curious thing is why France was making a film of the Great German Novel at all, and particularly in 1938?

Beggars of Life (1928)

Beggars of Life

[30 December 2006]

This is an entertaining film containing passages of alarming sentimentality that are neutralised by frank brutality (the brutality being provided by the indomitable Oklahoma Red - Wallace Beery - a thug with a conscience, and the psychopathic Black Mose - Edgar Washington).

Louise Brooks does very well as an imp of promise escaping a sinister rapist, and Richard Arlen is effective as her practical-minded (but not overly intelligent) beau. In fact I think this is just about the only one of her American films where Brooks gets the opportunity to do some real acting. It is thought that this was one of the first films to pioneer the androgynous look. The other stock players add to the drama, and the cinematography is well done.

Although Beery gets top-billing we do not see him until the latter half of the picture. This is just as well, because he does enough scene-stealing to compensate for his absence in the first half.

Brooks did not care for William Wellman, who appears to have been a hard task-master, and as she remarked in her memoirs: 'I knew Billy was a phoney brave man and consequently a woman-beater - all cowards revenge themselves on women - just by feel, especially when my ass hit the pavement in "Beggars of Life"'. This might be a reference to her failed attempt to board a moving train where the viewer (for once) gets some idea of how difficult a task this is. Of course Wellman might have been a little harsh with her because she was fast acquiring a reputation as an actress who was difficult to handle.

Love 'Em and Leave 'Em (1926)

Love 'Em and Leva e'Em

[30 December 2006]

This is the only chance I have had to see Louise Brooks practice her dancing, and I'm afraid it isn't up to much. If she could dance she wasn't going to give the audiences of this film the opportunity to find out.

This is a reasonable effort - so probably fairly typical for Frank Tuttle. It is a sister vs. sister story - inevitably one is good (Mame Walsh, played carefully by Evelyn Brent) and the other not so good, or rather very, very bad (Janie Walsh, played by Brooks). In between them is Bill Billingsley (an average Lawrence Gray, who had a speciality in heels and sharks).

I can't help but feel that Brent was cheated. She had struggled for several years to get top billing. She achieved it in this film, but hers is largely a thankless - indeed marginal - role. She was thought to be a little old for the part (she was nearing 30), and it must be said that with her flowing locks she could easily have stepped out of a daguerreotype, for all her beauty. Brooks, by contrast looks very modern, and she carries herself in a very 'contemporary' way. There is more than an emotional gulf between these two - and unfortunately Brent falls into it. Brooks steals the film - not by acting (her handling of her gambling problem and her indebtedness is somewhat underwhelming), but by being very, very sexy. Brent was, by contrast, to cripple her remaining years as a star by trying to hard to act the part of a great actress. Her work became ever more serious, and therefore (because her talent had its limits) more stilted, and therefore dated. Sad to say, hard work brought her diminishing returns. I'm not certain that Brooks knew what hard work was, whilst she remained an actress.

This film is elevated from the level of pedestrian drama by its supporting cast, notably Osgood Perkins (Anthony's father, and a first class actor) as the vulpine bookie, though he sometimes looks as though he has swallowed strichnine; also Arthur Donaldson (as a self-important floor manager of the department store where the three main players 'work'). This was a pleasant and undemanding seventy minutes.

Le Jour Se Leve (1939)

Le Jour se Leve

[30 December 2006]

I cannot say that this is my favourite Jean Gabin film (which is either "La Bete Humaine" - which he made immediately before this one - or "Pepe le Moko"). However it is still exceedingly good, and is one of the best efforts of that most distinguished director, Marcel Carne. It has a good claim to be one of the best films of the 'golden age' of French cinema.

It is, above all, a film of atmospherics. The tall, stark tenement building, with a huge, rude, blank wall fit only for advertisements in some dismal north-eastern coal town - at the remote top of which lives this remarkable bundle of repressed violence and sexual energy, Francois (Gabin). We are transported, through the brilliant, claustrophobic sets of Alexandre Trauner, the emotive music of Maurice Jaubert, the smoky photography of Curt Courant (and co.) and, above all, through the haunting, eccentric, almost verbose script of Jacques Prevert, into a state of almost intolerable tension. Francois is almost the ideal of a type - the sturdy, manly cannon fodder of the Marne and Verdun, who would surely have backed Leon Blum and marched behind Maurice Thorez and Jacques Duclos. He is tempted by the pure love of Francoise (the luminescent Jacqueline Laurent) and the slightly debased love of Clara (the lovely Arletty). Set against him is his antithesis, the somewhat demonic M. Valentin, a cut-rate showman, cruel to the dogs from whom he profits (Jules Berry, excellent). So we have a love triangle (or is it a square?) about a story that passes in a circle (the ending being the beginning).

And, with his back against the wall, Francois lies in his bare, empty little room, smoking his last Gitanes, ruminating on his shattered dreams, and contemplating his forthcoming extinction. A bit like France in 1939, perhaps.

It Happened at the Inn (1943)

Goupi Mains Rouges

[30 December 2006]

This is actually a very subversive film, given the circumstances and the date (1943) at which it was made. It is set in the Charente, which is a region a little to the east of La Rochelle, and not too far from the cities of Limoges and Poitiers. As such it was close (if not on) the border between the zone of (German) occupation and Vichy France. Although this film consists mostly of interiors there are enough outdoor scenes (all shot in what looks like late autumn or early winter) to give a real feel for the countryside.

Vichy (which had a reduced jurisdiction over occupied France) sunk a very large amount of political capital into the promotion of a 'certain idea of France' - that's De Gaulle's phrase, however, not Petain's). That 'idea' was of a rejuvenated nation, that case aside the infamous corruption of the Third Republic, and which gave pride of place to morality, (Roman Catholic) religion and country - specifically the countryside, rather than the cities (which were nests of subversives and Semites, so-called). It was a form of the 'integral nationalism' promoted by Charles Maurras, but with Petain as a substitute monarch.

However, here is a film which deliberately sets the city (in the person of the naive store clerk, Eugene, played by the young Georges Rollin) against his rather wicked rural relatives, complete with a tipsy, centenarian patriarch (Maurice Schultz). It turns into a rather interesting detective story, but one with a very literary style.

I imagine that it slipped through the censor's scissors only because of the portrayal of the Parisian Eugene as witless and rather feckless - almost a pawn in the hands of his unscrupulous uncles and cousins. Yet the film is much more savage towards the peasants, who are really a gallery of grotesques. They are superstitious, opportunistic, entirely selfish, idle and grasping - it is almost like one of Guy de Maupassant's caricatures of the narrow-minded and bigoted Norman farmers and petit-bourgeois. So the enormous propaganda push by Vichy to elevate 'la France profonde' to mystical status is here either ridiculed or simply disregarded. This is really a film about characterisation rather than plot, and the cast (led by the excellent Fernand Ledoux) are first rate.

It is a pity that Jacques Becker was not able to keep up the good work in the postwar years - films like "Ali Baba" (with Fernandel), "Montparnasse 19" and "Arsene Lupin" for the most part didn't measure up to "Goupi Mains Rouges" or "Casque d'Or". Perhaps it is true that the restraints of a repressive culture and regime do make for a better and more subtle product.

A Girl in Every Port (1928)

Is This Really About Girls?

[30 December 2006]

Louise Brooks certainly didn't think so - she thought it was about a pair of 'homos' (as she called them). Well maybe it is, and maybe it isn't. What is is, though, is a pretty average and lightly entertaining buddy story involving that great slab of gammon, Victor McLaglen (as Spike Madden) in the lead role, and a rather nervy Robert Armstrong (as Bill) as his antagonist and, eventually, firm friend.

McLaglen may be consistently outlandish, indeed almost a cartoon character, but he is never less than engaging and enjoyable. He meets his match in a brazen hussy (Louis Brooks, as Mlle. Godiva, or Tessie from Coney Island).

Howard Hawks keeps this film going at a breezy pace, and there are a few wild, Hawksian shots of a real life (four (?) masted) barque struggling through a heavy sea.

Hawks always had a fine eye for an alluring girl and we not only have Brooks but also Maria Casajuana, who electrifies the screen for a few moments (in a scene set in a bar in Rio de Janeiro). Unfortunately, I have never seen her in anything else. It also seems that he put Myrna Loy appeared in a scene set in Singapore, but this was not in the print that I saw in the National Film Theatre in London, as part of the short Louise Brooks season.

For some reason this film was very popular in Europe, and Brooks caught the eye of G. W. Pabst...and the rest is history. It also (much later, in the late 1950s) caught the eye of the great Henri Langlois of the Cinematheque Francaise (Hawks was very popular with French critics at the time), which led to the first postwar rediscovery of Brooks.

Diary of a Lost Girl (1929)

Diary of a Lost Girl

[30 December 2006]

The is the best film that Louise Brooks made. It is far better than the overlong "Pandora's Box", and the more I have thought about it the stranger it seems that "Dairy of a Lost Girl" should not be more famous than its overblown predecessor.

The fame of "Pandora's Box" is attributable to the image and presentation of Louise Brooks as an archetype - not unlike a mannequin or fashion plate for a generation of 'liberated' German girls. "Diary of a Lost Girl" is forgotten despite its artistic superiority and the revelation that Brooks was not just a sensational beauty but a very fine actress to boot. In most of her films Brooks was called upon to pose, and perhaps to smirk - and she did it very well, but she was not asked to do any more, which might have explained her mounting frustration with the American movie business.

After she completed "Pandora's Box" she sailed back to the U.S.A., perhaps expecting to be treated with greater consideration by the Paramount executives who had been driven to distraction by her uncompromising (selfish?) working methods. The long suffering managing executive B. P. Shulberg offered her a much higher salary in order to turn her last American silent, "The Canary Murder Case" (which I have not seen) into a talkie. Oddly, she viewed this as an insult and treated Shulberg with undeserved contempt. Having destroyed her relationship with Adolph Zukor's Paramount she returned to G. W. Pabst in 1929 - she presumably hoped that Hom-Film would be a more accommodating employer. Accommodating, that is, of her increasingly erratic and temperamental work habits, which were lubricated by a heroic consumption of alcohol.

Pabst obviously had a great affection for her (who wouldn't, even allowing for her often lamentable behaviour?), and he famously remarked on the last day of shooting that 'Your life is like Lulu's, and you will end the same way'. That was almost prophetic, and her failure to register (to Pabst) that she was in any way aware of the consequences of her folly, was discreditable. So when I look at a film as good as "Diary of a Lost Girl" I am as conscious of her striking ability, as I am appalled by what she threw away through sheer wilful arrogance.

The story, by Margarete Bohme, caused a great scandal in 1905. It replicated the tale of the baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven, who committed suicide in 1927. It was not just the subject (a very candid treatment of prostitution that revealed a sordid and - worse still - undisciplined underbelly to Wilhelmine society), but the outspoken attack on the reformatory system, on the conditional and de haut en bas nature of charitable provision, and the strong suggestion of feminism that was highly offensive in a rigidly paternalistic social system.

Attitudes towards manners and morals changed emphatically with the establishment of the Weimar regime, and Bohme's novel was first filmed in 1919. A decade later, and having established herself as a poster child for sexual liberation, the role of Thymiane Henning seemed ripe for fresh treatment by Brooks.

Brooks performs the role of the wronged daughter who has suffered a 'fate worse than death' at the hands of a repellant apothecary's assistant (an excellent performance by the great Fritz Rasp); brutal treatment at a reformatory (more great stuff from Andrews Engelmann and a sadistic Valeska Gert - a differentiated reprise of the Sapphic character of Countess Geschwitz played by Alice Roberts in "Pandora's Box"), to further disappointments in the brothel, etc. The entire ensemble turns out a first class performance, and Pabst and Sepp Allgeier ensure that the photography complements the power of the story.

Zelig (1983)

Give Me My Ukelele and My Ukelele Baby and Leave the Rest to Me!

[30 December 2006]

This is a highly enjoyable film. Perhaps not quite (but nearly) a great film, because I don't think that the underlying psychoanalytical story quite works, but it is a hoot nonetheless. It is in the mocumentary style of "Citizen Kane" and "F for Fake" and is propelled by some very deft editing - almost a decade before "Forrest Gump".

In actual fact the idea of an insecure man who via some biological glitch turns into a close reproduction of his (male) interlocutors, is brilliant. The problem is that it is wonderful idea concerning the craving for normalcy in an age of fads and silly dance steps, and of superficial engagement in a mass culture, that needs a film of its own. Whereas in this case it is simply overwhelmed by the hilarious footage. Mia Farrow's part is therefore very nearly wasted, and the counselling sessions that take place at her home - though they are witty and engaging in their own right - struggle to compete with Woody Allen (Leonard Zelig) standing alongside Calvin Coolidge and Herbert Hoover, or William Randolph Hearst and Marion Davies, or swinging a bat next to Babe Ruth, or (best of all) Fanny Brice on a Manhattan rooftop singing "Say Mister Zelig stand by,/ 'Cause I've got a feeling I'm falling,/ Falling for nobody else but you!" with 'Zelig' substituted for 'Parson' (from the 1929 song by Billy Rose, Fats Waller and Harry Link).

The pastiche songs by Dick Hyman (especially the chameleon song) are a particular pleasure. Even a deliberately crass and corny number in the up-tempo style of the 1920s is a delight when compared with the aural ordure that passes for contemporary popular music.

Jonestown: The Life and Death of Peoples Temple (2006)

Jonestown

[30 December 2006]

This is a very accomplished documentary. It reveals, via its interviewees, a level of despair and dismay that the past twenty eight years have yet to efface. Whole families - indeed an entire community were liquidated in minutes on November 18, 1978. Jim Jones was a conventional mid-western preacher in every respect bar one - his empathy for African Americans, and therefore his commitment to the idea of a racially integrated church. Of course many conventional churches - Catholics, Episcopalians, Lutherans, Presbyterians, etc., reached out to marginalised communities, but this tendency was perhaps less pronounced in the southern evangelical tradition, which was highly influential in Jones' home state of Indiana (which had been the epicentre of Klu Klux Klan activity in the decade before Jones' birth under the leadership of Ed Jackson and the infamous David Stephenson). The fact that Jones was a little ahead of the curve on the most sensitive and essential issue in American society, and since he was cursed by an unusual sense of self-belief, it led him to believe that he was special, and that his message and the principles by which he operated his church, were unique. Once he comprehended the uniqueness of his mission there was really no limit to his ambitions - he could be anything - he could be the son of God or he could be an avenging angel. In fact he was also a huckster and con-man of the first order with a vastly inflated sense of his own importance, and his relative ignorance of ecclesiastical history prevented him from acknowledging that there have been several important communistic sects in the Christian tradition - not least in America (viz. the early Anabaptists in Reformation Germany, the Diggers/True Levellers in Commonwealth England, the Shakers and certain aspects of Mormonism, etc.).

As Jones staked out ever greater claims for himself, he placed himself on a trajectory of spiritual fraud that was so steep that any mis-step or retreat might bring his whole house of cards to the point of collapse. He therefore became hopelessly compromised: he could either become the messiah or another one of California's many prison inmates. The stress of this might explain the paranoia, the abuse of those in his power and the self-abuse that occurred as his 'ministry' progressed. In the end he had taken his loyal and long-suffering congregation so far (both emotionally and physically) that he must have reasoned that the only way of evading an wretched reckoning was by some form of abdication - which took the form of his own suicide and the murder of almost all of his followers. Jones was all of a piece with the likes of Charles Manson or David Koresh.

In view of his increasingly outré behaviour, it was almost inevitable that he should have gravitated towards San Francisco and that he should have become prominent in local politics under the aegis of the well-meaning (but arguably misguided) George Moscone. The film does not mention the close connections between the doomed Leo Ryan and Moscone, nor the imminent assassination of Moscone and Harvey Milk by Dan White. That was unfortunate, because it underscored the strangeness of this remarkable story. However, it is by no means a fatal omission. I would have appreciated some detail on the attitude of the Guyanese authorities to this strange Temple in the jungle. Did the government of Forbes Burnham and Arthur Chung know anything about it and the danger that cult members were in? Did they make any attempt to intervene?

I saw this film as part of the 2006 Times/BFI London Film Festival, and it is regrettable that it did not receive more publicity (not least in The Times itself). The story was told dead straight with little of the ostentatious editing that is now so common in documentaries, and is all the more effective for it. The audience left the theatre in something approaching a state of utter desolation - a tribute to the terrible nature of the story, the integrity of the witnesses and the ability of Stanley Nelson and his colleagues.

The film contains many scenes (footage of services in People's Temple) that seem joyous - and they are all the more tragic for that. Yet I could never quite tell what was in the eyes of all these doomed worshippers (many of whom were otherwise helpless, lonely and frail). Was it rapture or was it...terror?

Wise Blood (1979)

Wise Blood

[30 December 2006]

This is a very fine, disconcerting film. Hazel Motes (a brilliant Brad Dourif) perceives truth - if not through a glass, then darkly. I doubt if he has read David Strauss or Ernest Renan or undertaken any quest for a historical Jesus. All he knows is that Christology is a sham and that the spirit is a chimera. However, he does not disavow organised religion - and he advocates a church of 'Jesus Christ without Christ' consisting only of himself and a near-imbecile, Enoch Emery (Dan Shor). If Flannery O'Connor were able to recreate him today he would, no doubt, preach via a blog rather than atop a car bonnet.

The problem that John Huston faced was to create the old, primitivist, backwoods, segregated south in a Georgia that had undergone a dramatic transformation since O'Connor published her 1952 novella (though Macon wasn't intended by her to be Taulkinham). This was not the Georgia of Richard Russell, Herman Talmadge or Lester Maddox, but that of Jimmy Carter, Andrew Young and George Busbee. The schoolchildren are obviously 'integrated' and bussed, and modern high rises sprout on the city skyline - no doubt part of the commercial overspill from Atlanta. Dourif looks as though he has stepped out of World War II, or Korea, but almost everything else looks modern. This has the effect - almost - of suspending time and place. I am sure that Huston would have tried hard to create period detail if he had the money, but this picture was - so it is said - made on a shoestring.

Motes ends the film blinded, but he is no Tiresias, nor is his blood 'wise'. He is simply a very confused, perhaps deranged, individual with a rigid notion of his own righteousness. His narrow, gothicised 'thought' world has no place for relativity or compromise - and at the same time he is cheap and trivial (I suspect that he blinds himself chiefly to spite his antagonist, the fraudulent Asa Hawks - an distinguished performance by Harry Dean Stanton - but would Asa have been impressed by this extreme act? Would he not have chuckled?). In the end he remains in a bare room in a ramshackle house on a buff above Taulkinham/Macon, having adopted the posture of one of the minor prophets. However, unlike Amos or Hosea he remains mute. He has nothing to say, but O'Connor and Huston have created something that speaks volumes about the commercialisation of religion (viz. Hoover Shoates - a droll cameo by Ned Beatty) and the prevalence of rustic superstition in an urbanised milieu. Towards the beginning of this film Motes, having visited his grandfather's abandoned farmstead, complains to a truck driver who is giving him a lift that the country is becoming depopulated because of the construction of the interstate highway system (which was just starting at the time the novella came out) - everyone is fleeing the land in order to find work in the cities. Old customs will persist for a while in urban environments, but the close proximity of differing attitudes and cultures will soon deconstruct and dissolve them. Now that the city is advancing rapidly into the country: greater Atlanta sprawls over the Piedmont down to Macon and Augusta, and across the Carolinas through Greenville to Charlotte, we are finally realising the death of the world that made Hazel Motes possible.

This film is shot austerely, which adds to the message. The music is, for the most part, effective. The dialogue is consistently superb, for example (please forgive the paraphrase):

Motes: I represent the Church of Truth Without Christ.

Mrs Flood (Motes' prospective landlady): Is that something foreign? (of course she means - shock, horror! - Roman Catholic)

Motes: Oh no, ma'am. Protestant.

Solaris (1972)

Solaris

[30 December 2006]

This is the belated Soviet riposte to "2001: A Space Odyssey". In many ways it is the cut price version - the interiors are commonplace and unremarkable in comparison with "2001" and the special effects are palpably inferior (they consist of a number of cloud sequences as opposed to the more impressive, though numbing, psychedelic sequence at the end of Kubrick's effort). All this technical inferiority belies the comparative backwardness of the Soviet space project - the Soviets having fallen behind the Americans after the early 1960s, despite the prodigal and futile expenditure.

The acting - by the beautiful Natal'ya Bondarchuk, the great Lithuanian everyman - Donatas Banionis, and the brilliant Yuri Jarvet (a Lear for all time), is very creditable. Bondarchuk is particularly effective when recovering from drinking liquid oxygen. The film is exquisitely shot, by Vadim Iusov, who is particularly effective in outdoor scenes (the opening moments, with Banionis contemplating nature in a meadow, sets the tone).

In all other respects this is a very tedious picture - like its American counterpart. I am at a loss to understand its considerable reputation. Perhaps it is because it seems so much more thoughtful than "2001" - whereas in my view its 'message' (insofar as there is any discernible message) is at once commonplace (Tarkovsky said that the ending was 'too obviously symbolic'), when it can be understood at all, and otherwise perplexingly esoteric. We are left with a bewildering, pseudo-scientific mish-mash (What exactly is meant by the reconstitution of Hari by neutrinos? What have x-rays to do with anything?). The author, Stanislaw Lem, was appalled and disowned the work; Tarkovsky (who may well have been ordered to confect a 'great work' of Soviet science fiction) did his best to bury this effort. However, this may be the best filmed work of Soviet science fiction since Protazanov's "Aelita".

Judged by this film alone, Tarkovsky has the measure of Kubrick. Both have a predilection for excessive prolixity, and both share the belief that image alone will always be a substitute for content. So how about "Barry Lyndon" as the free world's answer to "Andrei Rublev"?

This film is not obviously Soviet. The leading characters have curious, denationalised names: Kris Kelvin, Snauth, Sartorius, Burton, etc. At one point - when Burton travels back from Kelvin's dacha - we are transported to the Tokyo motorway system. This was a bizarre and irrelevant insertion that is simultaneously fascinating and irritating (it goes on for what seems like 10 or more minutes). As such it was very effective - I found it so odd that I snapped out the state of semi-consciousness to which I had been reduced. Did Tarkovsky only use this footage because nothing as impressive could be found in the USSR?

Odd that Tarkovsky should have invited Bondarchuk to play the lead female role as I gather that he detested her father, the director Sergei Bondarchuk. It seems that Natal'ya didn't get on too well with Tarkovksy, and nor did Banionis.