film

Kind Hearts and Coronets. Review by Jane McChrystal.

Kind Hearts and Coronets. Review by Jane McChrystal.

by • film, year 2019 • Tags: , •

More →

Your Culture is not mine…or is it? America’s tense relationship with high culture. By Stephanie V Sears

Your Culture is not mine…or is it? America’s tense relationship with high culture. By Stephanie V Sears

by • art, authors, books, drawing, fiction, film, literature, music, painting, playwrights, sculpture, society, theatre, writing, year 2019 • Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , •

Your culture is not mine…or is it?

America’s tense relationship with high culture.

By Stephanie V Sears.

 

As a half French, half American individual, I give in to a pastime common to double nationals, which consists of regularly comparing both countries of origin.  A particularly provoking exercise in the case of France and the United States, because though the two nations share history, values, cultural ties, (in that profound sense of artistic, religious and philosophical influences), they also encounter some mutual irritation and bickering.  My intention is to point out these differences, only in so much as they may clarify the decidedly diverging relation the two countries entertain with high culture.  While this divergence may, to a certain extent, be explained historically and geographically, it cannot be so entirely.

High culture has been defined generally as” ….all that is best in a culture.”1  And the ruling consensus is that high culture includes all traditional artistic expression – ballet, poetry, theater, opera, painting, literature, classical music, film – of a quality surpassing national frontiers, by way of a universal appeal, even if such artistic work is clearly identified as originating from a particular culture.  Leo Tolstoy, for one, noted the importance of a spiritual connection between the author of a work and its recipient.2 The American philosopher John Dewey,3 for another, considered that the individual artist’s creative expression could, by being ‘consumed’ by another person, reveal by the same token the character of that recipient.  Finally, high culture is seen as transcending any immediate moneymaking goal.

In the 1964 French film sketch ‘Les Routiers melomanes’ (The music expert truck-drivers), starring Jean Yanne and Paul Mercey, two truck-drivers are doing their night shift together.  Wearing wife-beaters, both display, in appearance and language, the plebeian coarseness expected of their profession.  Yet as the one not driving, prompted by boredom, turns on a favorite radio station, we discover that they are both highly sophisticated connoisseurs of classical music, deftly able to argue the merits of a Beethoven quartet interpretation, as well as of other classical pieces; even as they continue to intersperse their highfalutin exchange with vulgar invectives directed at passing drivers.  They amaze us still more, later on, by discussing the poetry of Charles Peguy, (who, to be fair, is about as easy to read as it is to listen to music by, say, Karl Heinz Stockhausen), with the same passionate expertise and sensitivity.  Some of us may laugh at the contrast between blue-collar status and such an unexpected display of rarefied erudition.  Some of us may not.  Indeed, such socio-cultural discrepancy is not so far-fetched in France, a country renowned for its native infatuation with high culture, French or otherwise.  High culture is enthusiastically promoted in public and private schools alike and, generally throughout a society that is close to its culture; literally, at every step, be it in its urban centers or in its countryside.  In no other country, that I know of, is public opinion more indulgent and admiring of an individual’s inclination towards high culture.  Ultimately, one’s relation to culture is considered to be a personal exchange between artist and recipient, a deeply sincere, quasi-religious one.  From a French point of view, therefore, the situation depicted in the sketch ‘Les Routiers Melomanes’, may be considered as less of a joke about the contrast between social status and the expert refinement displayed by these individuals, and more of a poking fun at the native frenzy for culture in any circumstance.

I am almost certain that in the United States the sketch would be understood as a warning against class prejudice and division.

Famous actors Gerard Depardieu and Fabrice Luchini are both from very modest social backgrounds, the former having sojourned in prison in his nearly illiterate youth, the latter having begun his career as a hair-dresser’s assistant.  Yet, both have risen today to fame, not only as icons of classical French literature through their enacting of well-known literary characters, but also as legitimate authorities on French literature and poetry.

Over time, French education has also inoculated citizens from former colonies with some of the same passion for French culture, and culture in general, and it is not unusual to find oneself discussing Balzac or Rimbaud, with a Senegalese taxi driver during one’s ride through Paris.

The sheer number of articles and essays published on the United States’ educational and cultural decline – tainted either with suspicion, resentment or nostalgia – as some question the value of high culture or, on the contrary, deplore its abandon, or again, propose a blending together of high and popular culture, or even the deletion of the former, deemed passé – illustrates how, in America, contrarily to France, socio-political ideology has intruded in the arts domain, and how strained and somewhat unspontaneous is the country’s relationship with high culture.

In her 2013 New York Times piece4, Patricia Cohen gives the statistics, from 2008 to 2013, of an overall decline of visits to museums, to the theater and classical music concerts, ballet shows, (despite a slight rise in attendance at jazz concerts and movies).  Her conclusion remains, nonetheless, mildly optimistic as she evokes rising costs of tickets for the performing arts, the degree of accessibility to shows, and the availability of modern home technology allowing households to enjoy the arts at home.  Daniel Asia, more pessimistically,5 notes ,already for the earlier period 1982 to 2008, a drop in attendance from a previous 13% to 9.3% for classical music concerts, from 12% to 9% for plays, a sharp fall of 50% for ballet.  Jazz concerts – spared a decline in Ms. Cohen’s article – show a fall from 10.8% in 2002 to 7.8% in 2008.

In fact, virtual connection to culture often does replace the direct, physical connection that is yet so essential for a full impact of a performance or an exhibit on our emotions.  But a more fundamental reason for this distancing with high culture, is, most probably, poor schooling – what the economist and socio-political commentator, Thomas Sowell, calls ‘gimmicky education’, one pervaded by the notion that a student must ‘feel good’ about himself rather than receive a formal education.6 The gradual disappearance of cursive writing from school (though some schools are now bringing it back after noticing the nefarious effects of its vanishing)7, may, all at once, be a symptom of this distancing and underscore a tendency to simply abandon certain cultural habits that used to link the individual more seamlessly to his history.  Another cause or derivation of this cultural deficit may be the overall drop in literary reading.8 It is, however, the pervasive ideological discourse on social equality and how to achieve it, that must be held most accountable for this avalanche of sorrowful assessment of a general alienation from high culture.

Indeed, this scrutiny in favor or against high culture in America, reveals the interference of a socio-political self-consciousness in the world of the arts and high culture.  The moral posturing employed in this interposition, in an attempt to impose a corresponding social framework, tampers with creative integrity as it proclaims authoritatively what is moral and ‘right’.

This is not to say that all earnest affection and cultural identification with certain American artists has disappeared.  In my New England region, Robert Frost and Emily Dickinson are examples of such enduring and sincere cultural attachment.  And yet…and yet one can’t help wondering, amidst the country’s current cultural climate, if there is not also, beyond a genuine appreciation, the hint of a surrender to politically correct pressure, to a tacit consensus that these poets are ‘safe’ to admire, unlike other great authors.

Jack London, Henry James, (and to include international anglophone authors) C.S.Lewis, Charles Dickens, J.R.R.Tolkien, Joseph Conrad, are all morally condemned for reasons not pertaining to the intrinsic quality of their work.  Conrad’s ‘Heart of Darkness’, commonly accused of racism, is a case in point.  One can’t help wondering why, then, that particular novella has been so consistently studied in America, (knowing that Conrad wrote so many other exquisitely well written stories giving central stage to non-white indigenous characters), if not to select a work that may conveniently support the discourse of pernicious colonial mentality rather than be simply read as great literature.9 The character of Fagin in Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twist, has had the same fate.10 And such damning criticism extends even to music.  Richard Wagner is a prime example of unredeemable musical offensiveness.11

The resistance against high culture entails, therefore, the suppression of works regarded as offensive, by first ridding them of a certain majesty and placing them on a level with popular and commercial culture in the name of a more ‘modern’ cultural outlook.  Such a process may lead to adapting a great work by selecting parts of it and reducing that selection to an identifiable icon or slogan, that can then be introduced to the realm of marketing and commerce.  Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa and ‘The Kiss’ by Gustav Klimt typify such a process.

The American consumer of the arts is made uncertain of his taste for high culture in an environment in which high and popular culture become increasingly co-mingled, and in which moral criticism, condemnation, are in constant ebullition.  The consumer of high arts is directed or pressured towards a more ‘omnivorous’ consumption, implying a less ‘elitist’ spectrum of culture.12 This broadening process, which, by the way, any cultivated and culturally confident individual performs on his own, at his own pace, out of natural curiosity, is force-fed to him by mass media and other forms of public prepping as an exercise in redemption or prevention from ‘elitism’.

The fundamental difference in cultural outlook between France and the United States may perhaps be reflected in the twin expressions: Down to earth and Terre a terre.  The former, frequently used by Americans, conveys a positive and enviable quality.  The latter, in France, connotes, to the contrary, a certain disdain and suggests a lack of aesthetic, intellectual and ultimately spiritual elevation of the sort that should spring directly from the human heart.  In the American expression can be found the influence of a democratically egalitarian ideal.  In the French expression can be found the remains of a chivalrous ideal fraught with romanticism, and which America characterizes with some diffidence as ‘elitism’.  And yet it is not as if Americans have always been blind to those effects of a certain type of egalitarian idealism on individual self-determination and creativity.  In fact, in the American passion for individual freedom and devotion to a certain view of social equality, there is a strange yet fundamental paradox.  Ultimately, the two sides seem fated to clash until one is defeated one way or another.  It is worrying to see individual freedom being challenged and restrained in the United States’ leading democracy, in a way somewhat reminiscent of regimes vigorously condemned by American principles.

In his time, Henry Adams noted the negative influence exerted by democratic principles on the making and enjoyment of high culture: “What Adams plays upon is important- the hurts that Democracy inescapably inflicts on the intelligent, cultivated high culture, the traditionally artistic sensibility, the individual.”13 The constant moral pressure imposed by the democratic ideal on American society gave birth, as a matter of course, to a suspicion of so-called ‘elitist’ culture and, thereby, of a taste for it.  In Henry James’ book ‘The Ambassadors’, that same suspicion felt by the main character, Lambert Strether, is key to the plot in which Strether ultimately succeeds in resisting the seduction of European high culture, seen as the manifestation of a decadent society.  To the contrary of Strether, Henry James’ writing, one of the most sophisticated in American literature: “privileges many of the things that American life barely tolerates and certainly has no notion or means of helping to flourish.”14 Davidoff goes on to add that such literature as James’ does not serve the large categories of activism.”15

Though noble and, in many cases, necessary, activism in the United States has also, to a considerable extent, given in to political bias and propagandizing; which, in turn, has led to an abuse of socio-political interventionism.  In still more sinister fashion, however subtly it may have been conducted, activism has led to the censuring of individual freedom of thought and speech.  Certain types of activism in America that are focused on culture, are clearly over-stepping the line that separates democratic values and the invasion of individual freedom.

Daniel Asia,16 points out that in the USA, popular culture was always taken more seriously than high culture, partly because of the moral approach evoked above.  Yet the upsurge of popular culture in the 1950s, instead of melding different racial and economic groups of Americans together, opened the way to aggravating forms of blame and division, and led to what is commonly called ‘identity politics’.  Homosexuals, women, Native Americans, African-Americans, demanded to be acknowledged as significant yet, somehow, separate segments of American society.  As Michael Sliwinski indicates,17 this popular movement, improperly structured because devoid of intellectual leadership, and which, later, vented its views through mainly virtual modes, gradually led to a phenomenon of protest for the sake of protesting; as if mere agitation and clamoring could culminate in the desired result, whether the result was clearly determined… or not.18  In the 1960s, culture became a political weapon towards change.19  Any residual individual aspiration to experience the arts, unfettered by politics, seemed to gradually dwindle on the American horizon like a lonesome cowboy of the past.  Meanwhile, activism seemed to spread like a rash across that previously hallowed ground of creativity.

One may legitimately wonder, in such circumstances, what happens to an artist’s freedom of expression, but also to the consumer’s right to his own personal cultural inclination.  What happens when whole segments of society forcefully adapt the cultural environment by way of socio-political subterfuges?  What happens to that sincere and earnest search for “a shadow of the divine perfection?” (Michelangelo Buonarroti quote)

The direct encounter between artist and individual is increasingly and conveniently replaced by a ‘plug-in’, emotionally atrophied globalism.  Easy access to text, image, music, etc, and the consequent fluid virtual traveling of works of art and their swift manipulation by technology, blurs more and more the distinction between the genuine creative act and the consumer; useful, and to an extent, educational, giving quick access to information, virtual engineering also facilitates, with growing shamelessness, the possibility to ‘correct’, according to current acceptable socio-economic norms, any given artistic expression.

American activism employs the ‘soft’ method of victimization to filter its demands.  Even nature, in its unsullied grandeur, was once, as a purveyor of personal solace to all, left outside of political debate.  But it seems that it is now also being implicated in an environmental activism that does not seek strictly to help preserve nature, but also feeds a political debate with an over-all socio-political message.

In ‘Histoire du Juif Errant’ (1990) the French writer Jean d’Ormesson wrote that one would have to travel very far indeed to no longer be able to appreciate emotions common to all mankind.  In fact, unlike much of today’s activism in America, that only pretends to speak for the individual, authors like Tolstoy, Victor Hugo, Dostoevsky, Steinbeck, though considered as social critics of their time and place, spoke, in fact, first and foremost to and for the individual’s sake, wherever he might be.

Any intervening force, be it religious or political, that tampers with a personal encounter between artist and consumer of the arts, is bound to lead inevitably to a culturally impoverished society and a manipulated individual; or, to what Joseph C.Hermanowiecz calls: ‘The Culture of Mediocrity’ (2013).  One possible outcome of such cultural activism might be a backlash from a growing portion of society refusing to be herded into a single cultural format.  Activism having such a consequence, would, therefore, increase social strife and division rather than achieve the proposed goal of a multicultural harmony.

Cultural activism in the United States attacks a perceived supremacy of European culture as a villain holding hostage the vital innards of American society.  One may fear, however, and with good reason, that one form of supposed supremacy may, ironically, serve as excuse to shape another far more inescapable supremacy: of a sanitized culture ruled by a singularly undemocratic globalism.  In such a case, individual imagination is bound to wither.  If high culture is the self-consciousness of a society18, yet is contained or eliminated by a biased form of censorship, and replaced by cultural standards that fit a certain contrived idea of social harmony, that society is bound to become troubled and emotionally void.

Rather than diligently warn against cultural expressions arbitrarily identified as passé, racist, supremacist – a method which undermines the individual’s right to self-determination – it could be more to the point, and more inclusive, to simply acknowledge the benefits of high culture to everyone.

Through the individual, any kind of cultural encounter is possible.  It has been shown that great art welcomes tribute from any kind of individual variant at the intersection of social, economic, educational factors.  Here lies the magical appeal of the high arts for anyone, if experienced on the grounds of intrinsic merit; in other terms, at a level where neither ideology, racial/racist considerations, social gradings, nor commerce are given precedence over a work’s essential appeal to an individual.

Authentic human emotion creates bonds that irresistibly breach conventional social types, bringing humanity together far more efficiently than any ideology.  And left to its own devices, the power of culture is unstoppable in bringing together, say, a Chinese accountant and the short stories of J.L. Borges, an Ojibwa Native American and the Indian sitar, Mike Tyson and Baroque castrato music.

In summary, to privilege high culture, is, in my humble view, a way to bypass the sadly unsatisfactory bouillabaisse of the multiculturalism offered by media and commerce, for a far more genuine meeting between individuals of different cultural origins and/or social circumstances, bolstered by the highest levels of artistic expression, where they may seek together common values.

Stephanie V Sears © 2019.

Sources

1 Fahad Al Kubaisi cites Tuchman, Gaye, and Fortin 1989

2 ‘European culture’ is an invented tradition/Benjamin G. Martin/January 2017

3 Art as Experience/John Dewey/ 1934

4 A New Survey Finds a Drop in Arts Attendance/ Patricia Cohen/NYT December 2013

5 The Future of (high) Culture in America/Daniel Asia/2015

6 Inside American Education: the decline, the deception, the dogmas/ 201565 Diane Rehm Show with Thomas Sowell/ Washington DC 1993

7 Is cursive handwriting slowly dying out in America? PBS News2014

8 The long steady Decline of Literary Reading/ The Washington Post 2016

9 Out of Africa/Caryl Phillips/ 2003

10 The Faces of Fagin/Paul Vallely/2005

11 As if music could do no harm/ Alex Ross 2014/Can we forgive him?/Adrian Mourby/2000

12 Whatever happened to high culture?/Joseph Epstein/2015

13 Robert Davidoff/Genteel Tradition and the Sacred Rage/72/2016

14 Robert Davidoff/Genteel Tradition and the Sacred Rage/133/2015

15 R. Davidoff/Genteel Tradition and the Sacred Rage/134/2015

16 The Future of (high) Culture in America/Daniel Asia/ 2015

17 Michael Sliwinski/The Evolution of Activism: From the Streets to Social Media/2016.

18 Frank Tommler/Mixing high and popular culture: the impact of communication revolution/ German Pop Culture:’ how American is it?’ U. Of Michigan Press 2004

19 Roger Scruton/ High Culture is being corrupted by a Culture of Fakes/2012


The Good Soldier Schwejk: Review Part Two

The Good Soldier Schwejk: Review Part Two

by • books, film, year 2019 • Tags: , , •

Schwejk made his first outing in 1911 in a short story called Schwejk Stands Against Italy.  In the same year The Good Soldier Schwejk and Other Strange Stories appeared in pamphlet form. More →

The Good Soldier Schwejk. Review Part One by Jane McChrystal.

The Good Soldier Schwejk. Review Part One by Jane McChrystal.

by • books, film, year 2018 • Tags: , , •

Review of the Good Soldier Schwejk: Part One

 

 

The Good Soldier Schwejk is a satirical novel which exposes the futility and idiocy of war as it tracks the progress of the Candide-like Schwejk, across the disintegrating Austro-Hungarian Empire. The various superior officers he encounters along the way can’t work out whether he is extremely stupid or an exceptionally clever and devious individual.

Its Czech author, Jaroslav Hasek, produced it in instalments between 1911-1923 and shared some of the experiences of his protagonist, who stumbles from one mishap to another including interrogation as a spy by his own side and imprisonment for desertion. In one episode he is picked up by the Russian enemy. On other occasions, he just wanders off as the fancy takes him.

Hazek’s novel has been praised as a post-modern classic and adapted to a number of forms, including dramatisation by Bertolt Brecht and Joan Littlewood. More recently, it seems to have sunk into obscurity.

Maybe Christine Edzard’s new film can bring it back into the spotlight.

Recorded over a period of ten days in July 2017 in Sands Films’ theatre Space The Good Soldier Schwejk captures both the actors’ performances and audience reactions to it. Previews shown at Sands Films in November, as part of its Armistice Season, were screened in the same auditorium as the film was shot, inducing a somewhat disorienting effect in this audience member at least.

Edzard’s production spells out one message in particular: the arms trade has become one of the most successful global operations ever, by pursuing financial gain with no investment whatsoever in national interests. While world leaders can be persuaded that the only way to maintain peace is to have more weapons than the other side, arms dealers are free to ply their trade all over the world oblivious to anything but profit.

Filming the stage productions has made the most The Good Soldier Schwejk’s origins in the early Twentieth Century Cabaret of Prague and the film starts out with enormous energy. There are some great comic performances and, in particular, the best drunk act I’ve ever seen. Alfie Stewart does superb work in the title role, evincing the charming naivety of Ian Lavender’s Private Pike and the gormlessness of Michael Crawford’s Frank Spencer, (Sorry, younger readers).

There are a couple of problems. This fast-paced production makes heavy demands on the cast and the strain begins to show towards the end and, while I have no problem with its overt anti-war stance, sometimes the propagandising overwhelmed the drama. As another member of the audience remarked to me on the way out – “That was a bit didactic, wasn’t it?”

Credits: Written and directed by Christine Edzard
Produced and edited by Olivier Stockman
Cinematography and lighting by Joachim Benjamin and Rebecca Osorio
Schwejk played by Alfie Stewart
All other roles played by members of the cast: Joe Armstrong, Kevin Brewer, Sean Gilder,
Shona McWilliams, Michael Mears, Aaron Neil, Andres Tiernan, Michele Wade.

There are two more screenings of The Good Soldier Schwejk scheduled for December on 9th at 17.00 and 18th at 20.30 at Sands Films http://www.sandsfilms.co.uk/
The films makers intend to gain the widest possible distribution of The Good Solder Schwejk in the future.

In Part 2 I will provide some context for The Good Soldier Schwejk which I wish I’d had before seeing it.

Jane McChrystal © 2018.


Review of “Dogman” a Film by Matteo Garrone. Jane McChrystal.

Review of “Dogman” a Film by Matteo Garrone. Jane McChrystal.

by • film, year 2018 • Tags: , •

Review of “Dogman” a Film by Matteo Garrone

Credits: Screenplay: Ugo Chiti, Matteo Garrone, Massimo Gaudioso.
Cinematography: Nicolai Bruel
Set Decoration: Giovanna Ciriani
Art Direction: Massimo Pauletto

 

“Dogman” has scenes of tragedy and violence which are unforgettable and, at times, unbearable to watch.

Its location, a decaying seaside resort on the coast of Campania, forms a backdrop of such extreme desolation that I only hope it is the product of the cinematographer’s art rather than somewhere people are actually expected to live.

Garrone has used two non-professional actors, Marcello Fonte and Edoardo Pesce – to play out the relationship between Dogman Marcello, owner of a dog grooming parlour, and Simoncino, the local tough.

Marcello is a tiny man for whom the word “goofy” might have been coined. He washes, combs and trims his clients with tender care and appears a loving father to his ten year old daughter Alida, but something is wrong.

Marcello deals in cocaine on the side and his best customer, Simoncino, a tightly wound mass of meat, sinew and muscle, has an addiction which is growing dangerously out of control and there is nothing Marcello will not do for him. When the men of the town take out a contract on Simoncino, Marcello saves his life.

Marcello is chihuahua to Simoncino’s bull mastiff, who beats him up and humiliates him at every opportunity. He serves a year’s prison sentence for a crime Simoncino has committed and never even gets the measly 10,000 Euros he was promised for the sacrifice.

He loses everything, including the respect and affection of his neighbours, and is reduced to sleeping in the space where he temporarily lodges the dogs which are now his only source of income.

It is a bewildering experience for the audience – Why does Marcello abase himself for this being who seems scarcely human?

Can Simoncino do anything ever to push Marcello over the edge?

There is no backstory and little in the way of psychologising to help them out. The script, its dialogue full of brutal profanity, doesn’t really shed any light on their dynamic.

Well, in the end Marcello does find his breaking point and during the final scenes, as the camera lingers on his tragic, battered face, he gazes impassively the destruction he has finally unleashed around him.

Don’t miss the film of this elemental tale. It is possibly Garrone’s best work so far.

Currently showing at the Curzon cinemas https://www.curzoncinemas.com/film-info/dogman
Jane McChrystal © 2018.


The Living Thames. Review by Jane McChrystal.

The Living Thames. Review by Jane McChrystal.

by • film, year 2018 • Tags: , •

Premier of The Living Thames Documentary

On Sunday 28th October film maker, Dorothy Leiper, launched her documentary The Living Thames at Rich Mix in Shoreditch. She co-produced the film with Amy Pryor, marine scientist and Programme Manager for the Thames Estuary Partnership (https://thamesestuarypartnership.org/), a non-campaigning organisation established in 1999 to create a framework for the sustainable management of London’s chief waterway.

With an introduction by David Attenborough, the film highlights the work of the individuals and organisations who conserve and maintain the waters, beds and banksides of the Thames for the benefit of all those who live, work and play there.

Chris Baines, independent environmentalist and President of the Thames Estuary Partnership, takes the audience on a journey along the tidal Thames from Teddington to its estuary where it joins the North Sea, interviewing the people who ensure that the river will continue to provide the kind of environment where 125 species of wild life thrive today, including seals, porpoises, elvers, smelt and baby bass and bream.

Previous generations of working-class Londoners were bound to the Thames by their daily labour in its docks and factories which slumped after the Second World War and finally disappeared in the 1970’s.  The relationship between them and their river eroded along with industrial decline and one of the film makers’ main aims is to re-establish a connection between them.

They also recognise that the state of the river Thames has an impact on the lives of many who live beyond the city boundaries, so they are keen to find a wider audience for The Living Thames and increase their awareness of its importance to them.  Wider distribution of the film could also stimulate research into the unique habitats formed by tidal riverways and estuaries, such as the Thames, areas which have attracted relatively little scientific investigation so far.  They hope to realise these ambitions by entering the documentary into international film festivals.

The film makers have also made The Living Thames available free on Vimeo (https://vimeo.com/292578035) to encourage teachers to show it to school students and inspire a new generation of environmentalists drawn from more socially and ethnically diverse backgrounds.

Amy Pryor explained why this is a priority during the Q&A session after the screening.  Careers in conservation tend to provide opportunities for a fairly narrow demographic: those who can afford to spend years in higher education gaining relevant qualifications, and then, fill volunteer roles while they build up experience that could lead to paid employment in the field.  In other words, children from affluent, white, middle class families.

The Living Thames actually shows one way in which integrating environmentalism with education can change the status quo.  Students at St. Pauls Academy, a school located a mile and a half from the south bank of the river in Abbey Wood, regularly go litter-picking on the foreshore under the supervision of their geography teacher.  Chris interviewed a group of university students who had attended the school and were still showing up during the vacation to clear rubbish washed up on the shore.  They talked about how their environmental awareness influenced their choice of degree and the kinds of career they are considering now.

Amy acknowledged that young people don’t all aspire to a university education and proposed that apprenticeship programmes in relevant trades and professions should include conservation-related components.

The Living Thames is the result of enormously hard work and perseverance on the part of those who created it and it was a real pleasure to be part of an audience filled with people who had supported its production and share their pleasure in seeing it come to the big screen at Rich Mix.

Jane McChrystal © 2018.


A Review of Marnie by Jane McChrystal.

A Review of Marnie by Jane McChrystal.

by • books, film, year 2018 • Tags: , , •

 

 

During the month of June the media were saturated with coverage of the return of Poldark to BBC1 for a fourth series.  The success of this most recent adaptation of Winston Graham’s series of novels for TV owes a lot to the handsome Irish actor, Aidan Turner, in the leading role of Captain Ross Poldark.  His attempts at scything shirtless in the first series whipped up as much hysteria as Colin Firth’s emergence, dripping, from a lake in Andrew Davies’ version of Pride and Prejudice, which occupied the same popular Sunday night slot in 1995.

Captain Poldark first appeared on our screens in 1975 played by Robin Ellis who, like Turner, proved a very popular choice in the role.  Despite Winston Graham’s important contribution to the recreation of his hero for a TV audience and a long career as a best-selling author, he is a rather shadowy figure today.

Like many writers, his childhood was marred by illness, but he recovered and went on to serve his writing apprenticeship with the financial support of his mother until his first novel was published in1934.  He lived a long life and wrote fifty two novels admired by the public and literary establishment alike.  He was happily married to Jean, who inspired him and helped with writing the novels.  His two children, Rosamund and Andrew, remembered him with affection and went on to lead successful lives of their own.

The reason for his current state of obscurity is partly attributable to his dislike of fame, but with no early struggles for financial survival, no scandals, no drink or drug hell and no disaffected sons or daughters to spill the beans on a childhood of neglect and abuse, there hasn’t been much to excite the attention of the press since he died at the age of 95 in 2003.

Even one of his 30, non-Poldark novels, Marnie 1, is remembered much better as the film directed by Alfred Hitchcock.  Made in 1964, with Tippi Hedren and Sean Connery in the leading roles, Marnie tells the story of a mysterious woman who assumes multiple identities in order to steal money from her employers and the man who hunts her down, Mark Rutland.

Many critics view Marnie as one of Hitchcock’s most disturbing movies, where he exposed a bit too much of his own weird predilection for sexually unattainable blondes through his direction of Hedren.  Despite opposition from his screen writer, Evan Hunter, Hitchcock refused to cut the notorious honeymoon scene where Hedren’s doe-eyed, fragile Marnie is raped by her new husband, played by Connery with all the menace of a panther bringing down its prey.

We now know from her own account that Hitchcock’s treatment of Hedren in Marnie, was just one episode in a twisted artistic relationship which he used to frighten and torment her.  For example, he insisted on filming her being attacked by live birds when lifeless, mechanical models had been used in other scenes in his post-Psycho shocker, The Birds.  She also claimed he spied on her in her dressing room and, on one occasion, launched an unsuccessful sexual attack, as well as ordering other workers to shun her on set, increasing her general sense of unease both on and off it.

While Graham’s Marnie is the object Mark Rutland’s fascination, he is more obsessive scientist, concerned with the psyche of woman-kind in general and Marnie in particular as an especially fascinating exemplar, than sadistic hunter.  Graham’s Mark is compelled to discover what drives Marnie to a life of deception and crime rather than destroy her, although the methods he employs might end in the same result.

Marnie was written by a 53 year old male author of middle-brow fiction in 1961, so naturally, it is sexist and somewhat misogynistic.  I found the convoluted plotting of the second half of Marnie, where Graham plays cat and mouse with the reader, much as Mark does with Marnie, somewhat tiresome, but that’s the kind of reader I am.

That said, Graham’s portrayal of a woman, whom we might now describe as a sociopath, shows us how she thinks and why she acts as she as she does, and in doing so, invites us to understand rather than pass judgement.

We are constantly reminded of the keen intelligence which enabled her to rise from her position as dirt-poor inhabitant of Plymouth in the 1940’s and 50’s, to that of the smart, respectable employee who is trusted to manage substantial amounts of cash by her bosses.  She has good looks and a cool demeanour, but these characteristics do not define her.  Instead she uses them to distract men from her single-minded pursuit of their money.

Graham helps us to see how a mother’s abuse can foster a malign attachment in a child which is unbreakable and will dominate the rest of her life.  Marnie’s mother was in the grip of a fanatical brand of Christianity which she used to justify her cruelty and distort young Marnie’s view of herself.  He shows how war wreaks havoc on family relationships and poverty devastated lives in the years before England became a welfare state.

Poor Marnie, deprived of the capacity to love others by her childhood experiences, she can only dream of a life of luxury where want and fear will be banished forever.  Her anxieties and aspirations are all recounted in a flat, affectless voice which betray the bleakness of her inner life.

Graham’s compassionate eye is one of the reasons why it’s still worth looking at his work today.  There is also his talent for creating complex female characters like Marnie and Demelza of the Poldark novels.  His daughter recalled how her mother Jean’s attention to detail and excellent memory influenced Graham’s work, which must also have enhanced his ability to create women who don’t just embody the usual polarities.

As for Marnie, there is clearly something timeless in Winston’s anti-heroine, which continues to inspire artists to this day.  And so, a new operatic interpretation, composed by Nico Muhly with a libretto by Nico Muhly which made its debut at the ENO last November, will be staged at New York Met in October this year.

Why don’t people write like Winston Graham anymore? The Twentieth Century abounded with authors like him, who could tell an enthralling story, played out by psychologically coherent characters caught up in the most important social and political dilemmas of their time.  Some say Netflix does the job these days.  A few years ago it was all, apparently, being done by the writers of Corrie and East Enders.  Even if either of these assertions were true, we seem to have lost something of immense value, which could still pull in a wide readership today, if publishers were prepared to risk the investment.  I bet the potential authors are still out there too.

  1. Marnie. Winston Graham.  2013.  Pan Macmillan.  Paperback £8.99

Jane McChrystal © 2018.


Paris in the Cinema. Review by Julia Pascal.

Paris in the Cinema. Review by Julia Pascal.

by • art, film, year 2018 • Tags: , , •

Paris in the Cinema
Beyond the flâneur
Locations, Characters, History
Edited by Alastair Phillips & Ginette Vincendeau.
Published by BFI Palgrave

Julia Pascal

 

This is a compelling selection of stimulating essays for all lovers of Paris and French cinema.  The editors have invited a selection of international experts to produce a wide range of critical analyses of French films where Paris stars as a leading character.  Vincendeau is Professor in Film Studies at King’s College and  Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres.  Phillips, an editor of Screen magazine, is also Associate Professor in Film Studies at the University of Warwick.  Their dynamic collection is attractive and engaging.

These editors remind us that ‘Paris remains one of the most iconic, filmed cities in the world’ but they challenge the location as being merely a visual backdrop of glamour and romance.  The essays often take a socio-political views of French cinematic narratives and imagery as they examine politics, urban geography and memory.  Most pleasing is the challenging of Parisian stereotypes.

The book’s subtitle Beyond the flâneur makes it clear that the aim of the authors is to deconstruct the cliché of the flâneur as an existential figure, nearly always male, walking through the Paris street.  In each essay the interface between character, narrative drive and urban geography is inflected with a socio-political analysis.  The flâneur is a poetic  invention wandering through the streets dominated by Haussman’s nineteenth century  architecture.  It is  the décor supporting the archetype of the flâneur  who is nearly always male.  Many critics have seen a flâneuse in the character of Cléo in Agnes Varda’s 1962 movie  Cléo de 5 à 7.  However Jennifer Wallace  challenges this.  She sharply examines Varda’s Cléo  as an existentialist heroine whose journeys through Paris are the outward manifestation of an inner journey.  Cléo, a famous pop  star, moves away from the vanity of her artificially constructed public appearance and materialistic vapid relationships with men  to a nuanced connection with the city and a man she meets by chance.  In the 90 minutes of the film, the character awaits the possibility of a cancer diagnosis and this is the hidden time bomb of the scenario.  However the terror of the diagnosis is mitigated by Cléo’s healing  journey through Paris.

Wallace points to how Varda achieves character development through Cléo’s awareness of snatched conversations, the abandonment of conventional constructions of Parisian femininity and the spontaneity of living in the moment.  The drama is elliptical and if Cléo is the protagonist then Paris is a redemptive antagonist.  The arc of the screenplay is one of gentle discovery.  For Varda, the Paris cityscape is an extension of an inner psychic territory.  Cléo, and her friend Dorothée, take public transport.  The way Varda shoots this, roots the two women in the atmosphere of the noisy Paris street and gives them agency as active individuals who are keenly aware of those around them.  Neither the women nor Paris are glamorised.  Wallace’s examination of Cléo de 5 à 7 allows us to explore Varda’s achievement as a major but neglected work of the New Wave.

The deconstruction of stereotypes is not limited to that of the flâneur.  Raphaëlle Moine’s The Concierge in Contemporary French Cinema offers the caretaker as a symbol of working class Paris where the female gatekeeper expresses the social changes of the physical and human architecture of the city.  Stephen Gundle’s The Enduring Glamour of the Parisienne explains how Paris itself is incarnated in the fantasy of sophisticated Parisian womanhood particularly as epitomised in the actor Catherine Deneuve.  He reveals how the image of Deneuve has subtly transformed over the decades as French society itself has become more open to women’s narratives as independent Parisians with nuanced and complex characters.

in The Parisian Banlieue on Screen: So Close, Yet So far Vincendeau examines the Other Paris, that of the suburbs beyond the ring road.  This is the Paris of the poor who inhabit the zones of the high-rise.  Vincendeau illustrates how cinéastes have variously explored the endemic tension between ‘Paris’ and the suburbs pointing out how the tension between the two locations, and populations, express class war.  She critique the French media  for  exacerbating  social tensions by either ignoring deprived  populations or reducing them to  ‘a narrow band of alienated young men’  epitomised by the protagonists of  Mathieu Kassowitz’s 1995 film La Haine.  This essay does not confine itself only to the cinema of the banlieue it also explores the influence of the socio-economic-cultural philosophy which influences the material production of films set in the periphery.  Vincendeau notes that suburban municipalities often contribute to the financing of local shoots.  Films which present positive images of the banlieue can boost local economy and even push up house prices.  In this way local geography can be re-visualised as a place worthy of artistic attention and political invigoration.  Vincendeau helps the English reader to understand the liaison between local French politics and the political resonances of cinema through film production at all levels.

It is another Paris that Sandy Flitterman-Lewis evokes in Site of Infamy: The Vel’ d’Hiv in French Cinema.  This enormous velodrome was destroyed in 1959 perhaps because it was the memory site of one of the most shameful events in French history: La Rafle- the Round Up of the Jews.  This terrible event took place on 16-17 July 1942 and was conducted by the French gendarmerie as it obsequiously served the Nazi death machine.  Flitterman-Lewis notes that ‘Post-war orders to destroy all records of the roundup enacted a policy of organised amnesia’.  In 70 years only five feature films have alluded to this murderous act.  Flitterman-Lewis’ chapter discusses three.  Les Guichets du Louvre, Monsieur Klein and La Rafle.  She gives us a strong interpretation of how Paris figures in a shameful French history but I am not sure that any French auteur has yet explored the narrative of the betrayal of Jews in France from the inside.

I have not done justice to all the expert contributors to this compact and dense volume but, by examining a few, I hope to give a sense of how important this collection is to anyone interested in cinematic representations of Paris and France.  Vincendeau and Phillips have produced a seminal work which doubles as a leading reference and an accessible entry point for those of us who enjoy learning how to read French cinema as the reflection of a complex and troubling society that, at its best, succeeds in challenging clichés and uncovering taboos.

Julia Pascal © 2018.


A Review of Love in the City – An Experiment from the Last Days of Neorealism, by Jane McChrystal.

A Review of Love in the City – An Experiment from the Last Days of Neorealism, by Jane McChrystal.

by • film, year 2018 • Tags: , •

A Review of Love in the City – An Experiment from the Last Days of Neorealism

Sands Films Cinema Club of Rotherhithe regularly shows well-known classics and rarely-seen gems as part of a programme* designed to bring the best of world cinema to a London audience.  Each film is introduced by Olivier Stockman, director of Sands Films, who concludes the showing with a Q and A session when the audience is invited to share in Olivier’s deep knowledge of the history of film.

The cinema club recently put on a season of films made in 1953 which included Cesare Zavattini’s Love in the City (L’Amore in Citta)**.  In his introduction Olivier informed us that the producer and director, Zavattini, intended it as the first part in a series of works modelled on the cinegiornale format, which ended up as a one-off.  It consists of six shorts directed by well-known exponents of the neorealist movement, whose growing fame and increased commitment to their individual work prevented further contribution to Zavattini’s project.

Love in the City focuses on contemporary experiences of love in the city of Rome.  Made in the final days of neorealism, the film is typical of the movement: using real people speaking in their own voices rather than professional actors; filming on location rather than in the studio; exposing the unique and fascinating aspects of ordinary lives lived in challenging conditions.

As Olivier explained, the practitioners of this art form aspired to produce films which were the antithesis of “telefoni bianchi”, the white telephone movies made in Italy between the wars, which showed Italians living a life of Hollywood glamour way beyond the reach of most cinema-goers, epitomised by the presence of a white telephone on set.

The first film, Paid Love by Carlo Lazzini, enquires into the daily life and trials of Rome’s prostitutes through an unseen interviewer, who asks the paid lovers on its dark and shadowy streets about how they got there and why they stay.   It records stories of seduction, betrayal and abandonment told by women who seem weary, yet strangely free from the dangers of physical attack, sexual violence and addiction which have always been part and parcel of the lives of those who work in the sex industry.  They complain of little more than the difficulty of keeping warm, how many pairs of shoes they wear out in a year, and the risk of being arrested.  One young woman, filmed in her lodgings, reveals her youth and naivety when she displays a huge, grotesque Marie-Antoinette doll bought with her earnings and describes how she relaxes in her time off with Mickey Mouse comics.  Lazzini probes his subjects in an objective manner but his curiosity is tempered by sympathy for them.

Next, Michelangelo Antonioni documents the circumstances which drive individuals to attempt suicide, giving the audience a more detached, existential view of his chosen issue than Lazzini.   Again, the spotlight is on women whose misfortunes are due to failed love.  Antonioni concludes that his subjects’ plight is really the province of the psychologist, but his film focuses on a kind of anomie experienced by some citizens of Rome in the aftermath of the Second World War which could lead to a desire for self-destruction.  Shots of the participants in Attempted Suicide, staged in front of huge sheets of paper, reinforce their sense of alienation and presage some aspects of Antonioni’s later work.

Gavattini grants the audience some relief from the seriousness of Lazzi and Antonioni’s offerings with the presentation of Dino Risi’s Paradise for three Hours (Paradiso per Tre Ore).  Risi leads them into the dance hall on a Sunday evening where domestic servants take a break from their duties in the company of soldiers and young men crazy about dance.  The tone is comic, maybe a little cynical: dancers wink and exchange flirtatious glances with other dancers over their partners’ shoulders; boys with brilliantined quiffs and flash clothes exhibit their best moves to the girls and each other; a battleaxe Mama vets prospective dancing partners’ suitability for her daughter; a beautiful Amazon arrives and causes havoc; a fight breaks out.  But sweet romance flowers on the side-lines: a soldier and a young woman look at each other shyly but with longing, until the curfew hour arrives and she has to leave whereupon the soldier finally finds his feet and runs out of the hall to catch up with her in the street.  And so the first half of Love in the City ends.

The second half opens with Federico Fellini’s Marriage Bureau (Agenzia Matrimomiale).  At first Fellini seems to be presenting another documentary –style film with the introduction of his protagonist, a young journalist played by professional actor Antonio Cifariello, on an assignment to investigate the bureau.  Unlike the young men of Three Hours in Paradise, he is elegantly dressed and groomed.  He even has a car.  But as soon as enters the crumbling palazzo which houses the bureau, the atmosphere changes and takes on a dream-like quality.  The building is a bewildering maze where dozens of families live hugger mugger with scarcely any privacy.  His requests for directions are futile until he comes across a group of children who lead him through the corridors to his destination, where he finds the bureau’s managers presiding over a madly bureaucratic setup.  Unprepared for his mission, he comes up with a preposterous story about a wealthy, lycanthropic friend who is looking for a wife who would be willing to tolerate his peculiarity.  Amazingly, a potential bride is found and he drives her to the outskirts of Rome where he repeats his ridiculous tale.  But the inexperienced reporter has underestimated the terrible gulf which separates the wealthy bourgeoisie from country folk.  For the lisping girl from a dirt-poor rural background tells him that marriage to a werewolf would be quite desirable in comparison with her current wretched state, and he realises the joke has gone too far.  He tells her that he doesn’t think the marriage would work out and she blames herself for lacking the qualities needed to make a suitable partner for an imaginary shape-shifter.

Caterina’s Story (La Storia di Caterina), is an account of how a young woman abandoned her son in the face of insuperable difficulties with the role of Caterina played by the boy’s mother in real life, Caterina Rigoglioso.  Directed by Zavattini and Francesco Masselli, it is the most conventional of the six films, with its origins clearly to be seen in the Nineteenth Century literary tradition of Verismo.  Its makers spare no efforts in rousing the audience’s pity with this story of a mother who struggles to bring up her son in the face of a church and state which seem cruelly indifferent to their desperation.  When she changes her mind and tries to reclaim him, she goes to court to exonerate herself and get him back, while branded “an unnatural mother” in the press.

As the audience tucks away their hankies, Zavattini ends Love in the City with Men Staring (Gli Italiani si voltano), a look at sex in the city.   A camera follows beautiful women through the streets of Rome to capture the reactions of the men who turn to stare at them.  It lingers on their well-upholstered bosoms and shapely legs as men ogle and some follow the objects of their admiration.  Inevitably, a driver loses control and collides with another car.  Alberto Lattuada’s film might make discomfiting viewing for some members of the modern audience, but it recalls an Italy of bottom-pinching and catcalls, probably not entirely extinct, which seems to me more in keeping with Benny Hill than Harvey Weinstein.

Even though many of the subjects of Love in the City appear as victims, the film is still remarkably innovative for placing women in its foreground.  Even more daringly the directors insist that a woman who has left a child or attempted suicide or works as a prostitute is still worthy of the audience’s understanding and sympathy.  This was a bold stance, and all the more so, when we remember the power and influence wielded by the Roman Catholic Church in Italy, which would have classified such women as mortal sinners destined for damnation.

Did Zavattini succeed in showing Italians to themselves in Love in the City? Yes, I think so.  It is hardly a fly on wall documentary and a lot of it seems contrived.  For example, Dino Risi could never have captured all the incidents in sequence which occur in one dance-hall on one Sunday evening in Three Hours in Paradise.  But if we compare it with a Hollywood version of life in Rome released in 1954, the reasons for my conclusion should become clearer.

Three Coins in a Fountain is the story of three American women looking for love in Rome, where they can afford to live in sumptuous marble halls on secretarial salaries.  Rossano Brazzi, the only Italian actor in the cast, plays the love interest of one of the women, while another, an “Italian prince” is played by Louis Jourdan.  The plot is as insubstantial as air and could have been made into a film in any city with a significant architectural heritage.  Shot in Cinemascope by a crew imported from Hollywood by director Jean Negelescu at a variety of spectacular locations such as the Villa Lante al Gianicolo and the Piazza di Trevi, it is a glorious, technicolour travelogue, described by Bosley Crowther of the New York Times as – “Slick as Cellophane”.

By contrast, Zavattini’s black and white film shows Rome with much of its fabric and economy still wrecked by World War Two.  He shows the audience real Romans making a living any way they can, who go home to mean, cramped accommodation, but still know to cut a dash in the street or on the dance floor.  In Love and the City he captured an era of Italy’s history which would disappear in the wake of its post-war boom, along with the cinematic movement he helped create to make a lasting document of it.

Jane McChrystal © 2018.

*You can find the full programme by clicking on to this link:

http://www.sandsfilms.co.uk/cinema-club-and-events.html

**You can download Love in the City from Movienightseries.com

https://movienightseries.com/movies/id/63726/Love-in-the-City-1953.


Alessandro Blasetti and the Neorealists: A Review of 1860. By Jane McChrystal.

Alessandro Blasetti and the Neorealists: A Review of 1860. By Jane McChrystal.

by • film, history, year 2017 • Tags: , , •

Alessandro Blasetti and the Neorealists: A Review of 1860

 

Sands Film Club* recently screened Alessandro Blasetti’s 1860 as part of its 1934 cinema season.  Blasetti’s pioneering film has been credited with introducing a number of cinematic techniques which would become calling cards of Italy’s Neo-Realist directors, such as De Sica, Visconti and Rossellini, during the 1940’s and 1950’s.

1860 is the tale of a Sicilian shepherd, Carmeniddu, who is recruited to travel to Genoa and inform Garibaldi of the Sicilians’ uprisings against their Bourbon rulers.  He journeys north by boat and train, gains Garibaldi’s ear and ends up by joining the force of The Thousand to return to Sicily and fight in the battle of Calatafimi, where the poorly armed  volunteer force inflicted considerable damage on the Bourbon army.

The film deals with a decisive stage in the unification of Italy, or Risorgimento, which was to bring together most of Italy under King Emmanuel Victor by 1861.  While it shares the nationalistic themes of patriotic films turned out by Rome’s studios under Mussolini’s dictatorship, its use of ordinary people in leading roles and innovative cinematic techniques create a naturalistic style quite different to the bombastic productions of other Italian directors of the time.

Films like Carmine Gallone’s Scipio Africanus: the Defeat of Hannibal, portrayed glorious moments of Italian history through the eyes of its great men and leaders, enacted by movie stars in true epic fashion.  1860’s protagonist, Carmeniddu, played by a non-professional actor, Giuseppe Gulino, tells a story of historic events  from the view point of a naïve, enthusiastic young man who is fired by the cause of freedom for his people.

A more sophisticated take on the complexities of the Risorgimento is provided by the Italians-to-be he meets during his quest, as they argue in a variety of dialects about their ambitions for a new united Italy.

As one of the first Italian talkies, 1860 owes much to the Russian film director, Nikolai Ekk ,whose The Road to Life was a great success at the first Venice Film Festival of 1932.  Under Ekk’s influence Blasetti dubbed the soundtrack onto his film in post-production with impressive results, considering the limitations of the available technology.  Other technical innovations include filming on location and the use of match cutting to show action occurring simultaneously in Northern Italy and Sicily.

The Neorealists were happy to acknowledge their debt to Blasetti, even if his rather ambiguous political leanings appear somewhat at odds with their clear left-ward stance.  Blasetti concluded 1860 with scenes in Mussolini’s Rome, which seemed to draw favourable comparisons between his Black Shirts and Garibaldi’s Red Shirts, and were cut after the Second World War.

But, in the end, history has been kind to his reputation.  It is fair to say that, unlike Gulino, he was never one of Mussolini’s darlings, and the consensus is that he loved his country more than Il Duce.

1860 marks the beginning of the end of the reign of the Bourbons in the Two Kingdoms of Sicily.  Although the Battle of Calatafimi was not an outright victory, it demoralised the Bourbon army, gave heart to Garibaldi’s Thousand and encouraged insurrection among the local population.

Blasetti’s film memorialises a point in history when nationalist sympathies were mobilised to free Italy from external rule and recover its former prestige.  However, the idea of being an Italian has never really outweighed a sense of regional identity in the Italian psyche.  In 1860 four hundred and ninety four Lombardians and one hundred and ninety four volunteers from occupied Venetia joined the Thousand in pursuit of the dream of unification.  On Sunday 22nd October, 2017 Lombardy and the Veneto returned a strong vote in favour of and increased local control over spending and legislation and greater autonomy from Rome.

Jane McChrystal © 2017.

You can watch 1860 free at https://archive.org/details/1860IMilleDiGaribaldi

Pasquale Iannone writes about the Roots of Neorealism in his review of 12 key films, including 1860, in Sight and Sound magazine at: http://www.bfi.org.uk/news-opinion/sight-sound-magazine/features/deep-focus/roots-neorealism

*Sands Film Club meets every Tuesday at Sands Films Studio, 82 St Marychurch Street, London SE16 4HZ http://www.sandsfilms.co.uk/cinema-club-and-events.html


The Mystery of Dunkirk, by Jane McChrystal.

The Mystery of Dunkirk, by Jane McChrystal.

by • film, history, society, year 2017 • Tags: , , , •

The Mystery of Dunkirk

Dunkirk has emerged as 2017’s summer blockbuster movie.  The director Christopher Nolan has been widely praised for his ability to immerse film-goers in the terrifying experience of soldiers, sailors and airmen involved in the evacuation of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) by land, sea and air between 26th May and 4th June, 1940.

There is an occasional dissenting voice.  Peter Sturgeon, deputy editor of The Baffler, https://thebaffler.com/issues/no-35 describes Dunkirk as a “Brexit movie” in an excoriation of Nolan’s other works, such as The Dark Knight Rising and Interstellar, as “tory porn”.

Sturgeon writes that Dunkirk is:

…a work about World War II that contains no before and no after, in any respect; it considers only the battle itself in the form of pure combat.  But it also has no before or after because it is a period film that lacks all memory …

I believe this assessment picks up a key element in the creation of the myth of Dunkirk, which is shared by the film and the version of it imprinted on the national memory: they both tell the story of a major event in history divorced from its historical context. 1

Over the years, repeated celebrations of the little ships and their rescue of the BEF have made me wonder how the result of the worst military defeat in Europe since Napoleon’s victory at Austerlitz in 1805 has become enshrined in the English mythos as “our finest hour”.

To this day the Dunkirk spirit can be invoked whenever a group of English people face a dangerous situation with a degree of stoicism and unity of purpose which enables them to survive and pull through, frequently against the odds – a spirit epitomised by the story of little ships sailing the Channel under attack from the Wehrmacht and the Luftwaffe.

The original myth of Dunkirk was woven by the state, church and media, shorn of the complex chain of events which led to the evacuation and the role played in its successful execution by the Royal Navy.

The foundations of the Dunkirk story were laid down in 1930’s with preparations the French made for a German invasion.  They built a series of fortifications, known as the Maginot Line, along their eastern border with Germany, in anticipation of an attempted invasion on that front.  During the early months of the Second World War the allied French and British armies concentrated their forces along the Line.

So, when Germany launched its invasion through Belgium, the allied forces were caught completely off guard.  Once the Germans had entered France, they quickly reduced the allies to a state of chaos by breaking through defences at weak points and destroying all their lines of communication.

With the allied forces completely unprepared for this style of attack, known as Blitzkrieg, the Germans were able to press on through Northern France and have them surrounded at Dunkirk by 19th May.

On 16th May, just six days after being elected Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, had presented himself to the French High Command in Paris in order to find out how they intended to fight back against the advancing German army, only to discover there were no plans.

With no plan of his own, Churchill contemplated the risks of leaving the BEF in France, when a German invasion of the whole country seemed inevitable, and began to consider a partial withdrawal of the British force.

The French requested further aerial support from Churchill and he sent ten RAF squadrons, which they saw as a sign of his continued commitment to the allied cause.  However, by the time he arrived back in London he had resolved to withdraw the entire British force and go it alone against Germany.

As the BEF headed towards Dunkirk for evacuation, they were ably protected by the Belgian army, which fought on even though their own country had been overrun.  Churchill had expected the Belgians to absorb the worst of the German assault, but when they asked the British for help, Churchill told the War Cabinet:

…the Belgian Army might be lost altogether, but we should do them no service by sacrificing our own Army…

Two days after the evacuation began, with the Belgian army on the verge of collapse, King Leopold announced its surrender on 28th May.

Churchill did not hesitate to blame the invasion of Northern France and British withdrawal on the Belgian capitulation.  If he was going to mobilise the nation for total war, he needed to divert its attention from the allies’ catastrophic lack of readiness for the German onslaught.

The evacuation of Dunkirk took place over ten days.  No French or Belgian troops were allowed to board a vessel until all British troops in the area had been picked up.

During the last two days eight hundred vessels, requisitioned from Kent and the Thames Estuary, were deployed to carry troops from Dunkirk to Royal Naval ships which were too big to land close to the shore.  Most of the crews were made up of naval reservists, but some civilians volunteered to go along with them.

These brave men and women rescued 38,222 troops in their little ships during the operation, but this figure represents 13% of the 338,222 troops evacuated from Dunkirk.  The rest were picked up by the destroyers, minesweepers and personnel ships of the Royal Navy.

How, then, has the idea that the BEF was rescued by a band of civilian volunteers in their little ships become so deeply rooted in the English psyche?

Part two of this article, The Creation of the Myth of Dunkirk, will look at how the myth was forged, why it has remained so potent and what it means today, as England prepares to cast itself adrift from Europe.

1.Lynne Olsen’s Last Hope Island: Occupied Europe, and the Brotherhood That Helped Turn the Tide of War gives an excellent, highly readable account of  what happened in the days before the evacuation of Dunkirk, in a work which traces the origins of the EU to the coming together of heads of nations exiled in England during the war

An extract can be found here:

https://longreads.com/2017/08/07/whose-fault-was-dunkirk/

Jane McChrystal © 2017.

The Living Thames Cruise, Sunday 27th August. By Jane McChrystal.

The Living Thames Cruise, Sunday 27th August. By Jane McChrystal.

by • film, society, travel, year 2017 • Tags: , , , •

The Living Thames Cruise, Sunday 27th August

 

Londongrip’s readers are invited to take a cruise on the Thames Estuary on Sunday, 27th August.

Readers who live in London can take a boat trip on the Thames any time they choose and, no doubt, a number of them will have visited Southend and walked the mile out on the pier into its estuary.

The cruise offers an unusual opportunity to get a closer look at some of the Estuary’s less accessible attractions: the Red Sands Forts, built to protect London during the Second World War; the sunken cargo ship, SS Richard Montgomery and the Thames Sailing barges racing in their annual match.

Tickets for the cruise are being sold in order to fund the post production costs of Dorothy Leiper’s film The Living Thames.

The Living Thames is introduced by Sir David Attenborough and presented by environmentalist, Chris Baines.  It shows the work of the many people and organisations who ensure that the Thames continues to sustain all those who live, work and play by the river, through the careful management of its waters, beds and banksides.

The film reveals the diverse aquatic life which teems beneath the muddy-looking surface of the tidal Thames on its course from Teddington to the estuary, where it joins the North Sea.  The aim is to reconnect people with their capital’s river so that they can get to know it in the same way as earlier generations of Londoners, many of whom depended on it for their livelihood and transport through the city.

Passengers will board the 60 seater catamaran, Jacob Marley, at Southend Pier head at Noon and the cruise lasts three hours.  During the cruise they will get the chance to hear three Thames experts talk about the estuary’s ecology, marine life and history:

Amy Prior, Marine and Estuarine Scientist

Stephen Colclough, Aquatic Consultant

Dr. Fiona Haughey, Archaeologist

To learn more and buy tickets, please follow the link:

http://thamesestuarypartnership.org/thames-estuary-events/living-thames-boat-trip/

Dorothy Leiper’s Living Thames will be premiered in autumn and then screened at film festivals and shown in community centres.  Free copies of the film will be distributed to London schools.

Jane McChrystal © 2017.

1 2