Early Bloomers

 Early bloomers (in our garden today).

 Violets, Primulas, Bloodroot (sanguinaria canadensis) and Berginia  (sp. cordifolia.)

 

 

The Great Dictator (1940) [D: Charlie Chaplin. Charlie Chaplin, Paulette Goddard) An overrated film. The satire works very well, especially since Chaplin has sussed that Hynkel-Hitler was the empty puppet of his impulses. But Chaplin can’t resist inserting slapstick and farce, which interferes with the developing terror. The Brown Shirts may have been buffoons, but their buffoonery killed people. Chaplin shies away from following the logic of his plot to its dark conclusion. The final scene, obviously meant to be a stirring call to arms against tyranny, turns the plot into sentimental farce. Satire is allied to tragedy, and doesn’t need a happy ending to make its point. But perhaps the American audiences of 1940 preferred to laugh at slapdash tyrant instead of considering the moral imperative laid on them by recognising evil.
    I watched this movie because of its reputation. It’s become a curio, important for its historical significance. It did help mobilise American opinion against Hitler. But it's also an example of the muddled mess that Chaplin was capable of producing when not restrained by a strong director. A mixture of inspired satire, slapstick, and comedy, but that’s all, a mixture. The movie doesn’t have the structure that I expected. It’s a series of set pieces loosely strung on an underdeveloped plot line. Too often, I got the impression that Chaplin was showing off, or relying on his audience recognising a shtick he’d used many, many times before. **

Dr. no? Yes, it's the first 007 movie

    Dr. No (1962) [D: Terence Young. Sean Connery, Ursula Andress, Joseph Wiseman, Jack Lord] Well, I’ve finally watched this historically significant curio, almost 50 years after it was made. The very first James Bond film.
    It’s tedious, badly acted, poorly scripted, with uneven photography and far too much ominous music. It begins with three blind men wandering into the parking lot of a posh Jamaican hotel, where they murder an MI6 operative. The same crew then murder an MI6 radio operator. Bond is enjoying baccarat at a casino (what is it with casinos, that they’re supposed to signal sophistication and world-weary elegance?) when the call comes to report for a new mission, which ends with the death of Dr. No when his island retreat blows up.
     The production values are merely average, nowhere near the carefully imagined and designed sets we associate with 007. But then, nobody thought this movie would launch one of the longest running super-hero franchises ever. For James Bond is a super-hero, even if he bleeds occasionally. Connery is especially bad, I suspect the director didn’t think it worth the bother of providing actual direction.
     I can’t recall how many of the series I’ve seen. The first one was To Russia, With Love, and then Goldfinger. Looking at the Wiki list, I ecognise Thunderball, and Moonraker. Maybe I saw Casino Royale. In any case, Connery became a much better actor, well aware of his limited range, and collaborating with his directors in exploiting it expertly. I think Indiana Jones’ father was his best role. I think Roger Moore was the best of the other Bonds, none of whom I think measured up to what Connery eventually made of the role.
    You can find out all you want to know, and more, on Wikipedia. If you’ve never seen Dr. No, I think it’s worth a look merely because it’s such an awful introduction to the franchise. By the way, I tried to read one of Fleming’s novels once, couldn’t get past the first dozen pages or so. On that evidence, even this movie is better than anything Fleming produced. *½

Aftermath all over again: Robinson's Friend of the Devil

Peter Robinson. Friend of the Devil (2007) Some years after the serial killings related in Aftermath, the murder of a disabled woman reopens that case. The aftermath continues. Annie Cabbot has been seconded to the neighbouring police district, so it’s her case. Meanwhile, a gruesome rape and murder in Eastvale occupies Banks. The two cases converge (of course), and end successfully, if revelation of the perpetrators can be considered a success. The costs of that success are, as usual with Robinson, appalling.
     I read this book over about a week, which tells you that either Robinson’s page-turning plotting isn’t working as well, or that I’ve become jaded. Or both. This book was adapted for one of the TV series episodes, so it felt vaguely familiar, but I watched the video too long ago to compare it to the book. For Robinson fans, another satisfying read, for other crime fiction fans not the best introduction. **½

Academic Exercises: Short stories

 

 Glimmer Train #47 (2003) A journal of short stories founded Linda Swanson-Davies and her sister, Susan Burmeister-Brown, appearing from 1990 to 2011. I can’t recall how I came by this copy. I didn’t read all the stories, though I sampled every one. The author bios almost all mention a BFA or similar academic qualifications, which makes it a sample of what University writing programs produce. My take: Interesting, but by and large too self-consciously “engaged” with whatever theses the authors could derive from their tales. Carefully constructed, they attempt to give meaning to the lives of ordinary people caught in the web of ordinary life.
     But too often, you see the cogs being carefully assembled into a gear-train, and the crank beginning to churn the contraption. Too often, I didn’t want to know more about the characters than the first few paragraphs told me. Too often, the near total avoidance of plot (ie, of the intersection between a character’s decisions and the random events that make up reality) meant I didn’t want to know what happened next, let alone how the characters coped with it. For even if life is a tale told by an idiot, the sound and fury do signify.
     The first story The Accident, or the Embrace is one of two stories that took me into their world. Beginning with an accident in which a boy loses his leg, it ends with a discreet menage a trois (so discreet, it’s unclear if the husband knows he’s part of it). Midnight Bowling is told by a girl who manages to escape her mother’s plans for a religious life with her new man (married, hence adulterous, but a self-proclaimed Christian). She hides her intentions from her mother, and hides a good deal of what she know or suspects from the reader, who must tease together the few bits of the puzzle that suggest what’s missing from explicit telling.
     The collection’s interesting as much for what it reveals about the esthetic and craft standards of academic writing programs as for the tales themselves. I felt the writers knew what they wanted to achieve, but didn’t know why it might be worth achieving. Entertainment? Demonstration of narrative skill? Revelation of some overlooked aspect of being human? I can’t tell. They wrote good stories, but not memorable ones. **

Deceptions: Christie'sTaken At The Flood

 

Agatha Christie. Taken at the Flood (1948) In postwar England, the Cloade clan dislikes the widow of their rich relative Gordon, whose death in the Blitz deprives them of the money they had come to expect. A stranger appears with news of Robert Underhay, the widow’s first husband, supposedly still alive after all. Which would make her marriage to Gordon invalid, and so relieve the Cloades of their financial difficulties. The stranger turns up dead with a nasty bash to the back of the head. Poirot’s involved because Mrs Philip Cloade had asked him to find Underhay a week or so prior to the murder. 

     The usual complications ensue, and we are treated to nicely done puzzle but an uncharacteristically muddled narrative. The novel I think began as a romance about a returning WREN and her stodgy suitor, etc. The murder puzzle had to be solved somehow, the Inspector charged with the inquiry could have done it all, but I suppose Christie knew that inserting Poirot would satisfy her fans. So that’s what she did. Or so it seems to me. 

     The 2006 TV adaptation with David Suchet as Poirot offers a more coherent and nuanced tale. A couple of major differences reshape the plot so that it flows more naturally from the characters’ passions and flaws. Poirot is presented as the godparent of a major player. A couple of major plot points are completely changed, for the better I think. At any rate, I reread the book after watching the show, which paid more attention to the widening stain of evil, and how fate is the name we give to accident and coincidence. ** for the book, *** for the video.

     The book cover above will make sense only if you read the book.

Sam Elliot, bashful cowboy: Conagher (1991)

 

 Conagher (1991) [D: Reynaldo Villalobos. Sam Elliot, Katherine Ross, Barry Corbin.] Based on the novel by Louis L’Amour. Rustlers, a cattle baron, a homesteader who dies in an accident on his way to town, a bashful lonesome cowboy, a lonesome widow and her two lonesome kids, questions of loyalty and integrity, a stage line establishing its route through the district, and of course the laconic dialogue that marks the Western as a man’s man type of movie. But this is really High Romance. Elliot plays the knight in tarnished armour, Ross is the Lady in need of rescue, and it all plays out with a minimum of gore and a maximum of historical realism. Good movie. Available on YouTube. ***