Life must be filled up

Just spotted this on the BBC news site, while I was looking for the cricket. I’ve written previously about Margaret Barton (Mrs James) here and about Shillingstone here.
The performance seems an event not to miss!

I’m rather looking forward to seeing this film, although some people think it will be boring because ‘it’s about gardening’. The best thing about it at the moment is that Alan Rickman is all over the place promoting it, so you get to hear his voice. I could listen to him reading the telephone directory, as they say. I don’t know how it’s done. In the last Harry Potter film, nice characters are being killed off left, right and centre and I sit quite unmoved. Then Alan Rickman says one word, ‘Always’ and I start crying.

You might think that this year is all about the First World War, but yesterday evening BBC 4 (of course) put on a compelling little programme about the Allied POWs who built the Burma railway and their captors. There are still veterans, over ninety years old. One is 100 and still working. What made this programme different was that Japanese veterans were interviewed as well. From the British we heard a lot about forgiving ‘the Japs’, not having hard feelings, getting on with their lives etc. Some had written books, some had never spoken about their experiences until this little film was made. The Japanese spoke of ‘obeying orders’ and ‘being brainwashed’. They tended to deny that they themselves had seen ill treatment yet said that today they felt ‘sorry’ for the sufferings of the POWs. Some seemed sorrier than others. As really old men, they looked back at the ‘horror of war’ and spoke of the need for ‘a peaceful world’. Interestingly, it was one of the Japanese veterans who mentioned the film The Bridge on the River Kwai, if only to say that he personally had never seen some of the horrors portrayed in it.

When I was a child, it must have been 1957, my parents went to see the film. Next day they reported that at the end, people in the cinema stood up and clapped. I don’t know why I remembered this, but later I realised that the audience weren’t just clapping because it was a good film. It’s hard for people my age to understand what a very recent memory the war was for our parents’ generation. I see the BBC programme is getting another showing and is available on the iPlayer. The most moving part of it for me was right at the end: the whistling theme from the film played over still photographs of the veterans, with subtitles about how they live now.

Steve McQueen and The Beatles made an unlikely connection between two BBC4 programmes I’ve watched this week: Knitting’s Golden Age and Neil Brand’s series Sound of Cinema.

I was disappointed by the knitting programme. The films were good, especially the old black and white shots of women knitting Fair Isle patterns at astonishing speed while herding sheep at the same time. It was the voice over which was the problem; I felt it had a slightly mocking tone throughout which was at odds with the seriousness of the knitters. As for the old patterns, I seem to have most of them! The Beatles appeared because they popularized black polo neck (roll neck, according to the prog.) sweaters which everyone then wanted.



Polo necks were cool, as shown by the fact that cool people wore them, like Steve McQueen in Bullit.



I confess I still think black polo necks are pretty cool, also Cuban heels. Blue, not so much. I couldn’t agree with the programme makers that knitwear went out completely in the 1980s and 90s.



This oversized sweater by Nicole Farhi is from that era, as is this BikBok cardigan.



The Beatles turned up again in Sound of Cinema, illustrating the innovative use of pop music in films; in their case, using their own songs in A Hard Day’s Night (still one of my favourite films) instead of employing a composer. We also had a brief glimpse of Adam Faith in Beat Girl, Yay! I’ve yet to see that film. Then there was Steve McQueen, in his blue polo neck, epitomizing cool to the soundtrack of Bullit. I’m enjoying this film series very much but there should have been a health warning before yesterday’s episode. Viewers of New Tricks this week were warned that it contained ‘upsetting’ scenes. What? It was nothing at all, you see worse things on the news every day of the week. No warning, though, that Sound of Cinema would include scenes from films by Quentin Tarentino. I had to look away; I could never watch anything of his.

I was up at six this morning so I’ve already heard a lot of radio. On every news bulletin it’s been announced that ‘Peter Robinson, Northern Ireland’s First Minister’ has blah blah. What a strange emphasis. It suggests that Northern Ireland has a second, third, possibly even a fourth Minister.

GMS was out to get me this morning. Aled Jones and Canon Ann Easter (the unlikely Chaplain to the Queen) were discussing the sad death of a friend and said that only Bob Dylan would do to remember her by. So they played Forever Young, causing crack-up number one. After a little more chat came Adele’s version of Make You Feel My Love. I nearly emailed in begging them to stop.

Nothing on television yesterday evening so I knitted socks to Ill Met by Moonlight, my latest from LoveFilm. Even though it’s a Powell and Pressburger film starring Dirk Bogarde, I didn’t like it. The film is based on the true story (look it up yourselves) of a SOE plot to capture a German general in Crete and ‘make the Germans look fools.’ This is typical of the kind of brave but crackpot scheme which lost lives while doing nothing at all to end the war. Film makers really should have known that the war was not won by suave British officers cocking an eyebrow and spouting poetry. And Dirk Bogarde looked too damned pleased with himself throughout.


photo from IMDb

When I was about twelve I had a photo of Dirk Bogarde on my bedroom wall. Little did I know.

As Craig said on Saturday’s Strictly, ‘It’s getting boring. Everyone’s good.’ I certainly had trouble deciding who did the best dance but it was time for Robbie Savage to go. I enjoyed Movie Night, in spite of Brucie’s shocking fluffs. It was much better than the Wembley show, which the BBC is still crying up as the greatest ever while everyone else thinks it was the worst of the series.

My main gripe with the current show is the ridiculous and time wasting ‘here they are in rehearsal’, which then shows the couples in a silly film. Yawn, yawn: get on with it! The Sunday results show gets sillier every week with everyone referring to ‘last night’ when we all know it’s filmed on Saturday. Like Pasha would put on that make up twice or that we’d see Erin sitting in a gorgeous frock for the hell of it, rather than that later she’ll be doing a show dance with Anton. Then there’s the obligatory entertainment. Who is Alfie Boe and since when has he been ‘one of the world’s great tenors?’ I thought the Bond medley was ghastly.

It’s still a very hard one to call. Looks like a final between Harry and Chelsee but Holly’s suddenly decided she could be there. Lurved her dance with Artem.


( LoveFilm and Bright Star )

This was supposed to be Monday's post! LJ is still rather broken.



Over the weekend I watched Far from the Madding Crowd in two instalments. When I first saw the film I’d never even visited Dorset, let alone had any idea that one day I would live here. It was longer and slower than I remembered but still very good. There’s beautiful scenery (it was shot in Wiltshire and Dorset), a lovely pastoral score by Richard Rodney Bennett and clever use of folk songs throughout to highlight the story. There’s a strong feeling of the isolation of rural communities (Bathsheba’s aunt’s house in the middle of nowhere), the rhythm of the seasons and celebrations of the high points of the farming year. No Lark Rise-style rose-tinted spectacles here but plenty of mud, rain, fog and a reminder that loss of stock or a rick fire could mean ruin.

What struck me was how closely it follows the book yet is very obviously a sixties film. Julie Christie’s hair and make-up mark her out immediately as a sixties’ beauty rather than a nineteenth century one. The shots, too, all those long views of the rolling landscape and especially the ones with figures outlined against the sky (the view of Terence Stamp at the top of a hill is particularly good) seem very sixties features, which you can see in Whistle Down the Wind, for instance. Julie Christie is not really convincing as the tough woman Bathsheba must have been to be ‘Queen of the Corn Market’ but it’s easy to see how Terence Stamp (cor!) got mastery of her and to believe in Peter Finch as her obsessive and half-crazed would-be lover. I found Alan Bates less good as Gabriel Oak than I remembered but I think the fault there lies with Hardy. When I read the book as a teenager Gabriel had all my sympathy; it’s only now that his devotion stretches my credulity.

I really enjoyed this re-visit and now want to read the book again.

Most people must know by now that Rosemary Sutcliff’s classic novel The Eagle of the Ninth has been filmed as The Eagle. There’s a review here from The Guardian. With everyone talking about the book I decided to read it again.

I was probably about eleven when I first read it and Sutcliff became one of my favourite authors. It wasn’t just that the stories were interesting, but the connections between the books (a ring, a battered eagle, a flint) gave a real sense of history. I can truly say it’s thanks to Rosemary Sutcliff that I chose a history degree. The Eagle of the Ninth starts with young Marcus taking his first command, at the edge of the Roman Empire in misty Britain. His career with the Eagles is destroyed by wounds received in a battle against insurgents. At this stage the reader’s sympathies are all with Marcus and the Romans, which is clever. Marcus is more than a simple soldier though; he becomes interested in Britain and the ways of the native peoples. When he buys the slave Esca he puts to him the classic defence of colonialism, saying that surely the laws, roads and other advantages of the Roman way are beneficial to the subject peoples? Esca replies that they are not and cannot be their ways. The story becomes an exciting treasure hunt as Marcus and Esca seek the lost eagle of the Ninth Legion and I finished it almost at a sitting. At the end I decided I’m definitely Roman in spirit.

As you read your way through the other Roman novels you see the assimilation of Roman ways (in the south, at least) until Roman ways have become the old ways, to be defended against new invaders. It’s all very subtle and brilliant. If there is a weakness in the novels, for me it’s the dialogue. I get tired of ‘It is in my heart that’, ‘It is in my mind that’ but I’m just quibbling, as it’s very difficult to write so that characters from the past sound slightly different from us but not ridiculous. The Eagle of the Ninth was illustrated by C Walter Hodges. Much as I like his work, Charles Keeping was far the better choice for the other books; his stark, stylized pictures seem a perfect match for the stories.

The film is getting good reviews but looking at the trailer



I personally find it hard to get past the American accents and I've spotted one huge error. Looks exciting, though!

I’m moving straight on to The Silver Branch now and I see I’m in for a big Sutcliff re-read in addition to the books I already have on the go. My absolute favourite of all her books is not a Roman one at all but Simon, in which childhood friends find themselves on opposite sides in the English Civil War. It’s rare for both points of view to be shown in a work of historical fiction for children (see The Children of the New Forest, for example) and shows Sutcliff’s skill at writing fiction which was never didactic, or a mere excuse to teach history (a weakness in Cynthia Harnett’s novels, IMO). Challenging, perhaps, but so worth the effort.

These books are as suitable for adults as for good readers of eleven-plus, I’d say. The Book People have a good offer of the so-called Eagle Trilogy for £4.99. Cheaper than £200.00 or more for a first edition of TEOTN!

John Barry has died. He was famous for writing a lot of James Bond film title tracks but you probably have no idea how many of his songs and tunes you know without realizing he was the composer; stuff which has been the background to our lives for many years. I’ve known his work since the 1960s because he wrote the arrangements for Adam Faith’s hits. Yes, I do still have the record in the picture.

If you ever switch on the radio you can hardly have missed the trailers for The Richard Burton Legacy on Radio 2 with Michael Sheen. Oh, that voice. If you were capable of being the greatest actor of the age, would you choose Hollywood, money and booze instead? Just wondering.

Googling around I found the Alt Film Guide and Four Angry Young Men. They are: Albert Finney, Tom Courtenay, Richard Burton and Richard Harris. It’s not the actors who are angry but the characters they played in the black and white films of the period. I love those films and I’ve always admired Burton in Look Back in Anger.