A Film For May: Pandora’s Box

Wow this was good! It’s 1929 and the dazzling Louise Brooks stars as Lulu in G.W. Pabst’s silent melodrama about a show girl who exudes a magnetism no one can resist.

But what starts as a seemingly light hearted comedy, heads towards tragedy in a series of lurid events that takes Lulu and everyone she knows on a downward spiral to destruction.

From the opening scenes of her illicit affair with the ageing newspaper tycoon to the passion that his son Alma (Francis Lederer) feels for her and the infatuation of Countess Geschwitz (Alice Roberts) we know that there’s nothing coy about her and she smiles devilishly at the camera with an uninhibited sexual energy. But what makes her interesting is a playful innocence, an element of grace and funny sauciness that stops her from being a classic femme-fatale, and keeps our sympathy She’s our heroine and our villain.

The beautiful costumes, contemporary apartments and lavish parties of high society Berlin are left by way of murder, a trial, blackmail, people traffickers and more,as they escape by boat to foggy, impoverished London squalor; where news bulletins warn women of a murderer stalking the streets. Prostitution seems to be the only hope for survival for Lulu, but then her streak of kindness gets in the way when she still accepts a customer even though he has no money, because she likes him. . .

This restored version is long, just over 2 hours, but it’s divided into manageable ‘acts’ and it’s never dull! I see that Pabst is well known for making films about the plight of women and I’m looking forward to watching more, in particular The Joyless Street (1925) with Greta Garbo and Diary of a Lost Girl (1929) again with Louise Brooks. I watched Pandora’s Box on YouTube and here’s the BFI trailer.

Jill

It’s the start of the Michaelmas term at Oxford University and eighteen year old John Kemp arrives by train from his northern town. Naive and studious; shy and awkward, he’s the first in his family to go to university; the result of an ambitious English master, supportive parents, and a full scholarship.

After suffering the dilemmas of the train he arrives at his college to find that he’s sharing rooms with a boy called Christopher Warner; a vaguely charming, bullyish rogue, who’s already arrived and filled their rooms with friends who are having tea. The noise, the laughter, the smoking, the girls, everything about his situation is excruciating and I thought I might be in for a raucous comedy of class difference and ribaldry . . .

Spin #37: The Result

It was my lucky day, the number spun on Sunday was . . .

which on my list was Jill by Philip Larkin, one of my two top choices!

In 2003 Larkin was chosen as Britain’s best- loved poet of the previous fifty years in a Poetry Book Society Survey and in 2008 The Times named him Britain’s greatest post-war writer; but apart from his poem about parents, This Be The Verse, I didn’t really know anything about him and was surprised to find that he had written two novels: Jill and A Girl in Winter.

First published in 1946 the back cover blurb says:

Michaelmas term, 1940. Eighteen-year-old John Kemp has come down from Lancashire to Oxford University to begin his scholarship studying English. But when he invents an imaginary sister to win the attention of a rich but unreliable ‘friend’, and then falls in love for real, undergraduate life becomes its own strange world. . .

At first glance I think this could be either lots of fun or excruciatingly embarrassing, as John tries to figure out university life! I need to read and review it by Sunday, the 2nd of June and my fingers are crossed for fun.

Classics Club Spin #37

It’s time for another spin and this is my list of 20 titles taken from my original classics challenge list. On Sunday 21st April the numbers will be spun and I need to read and review the corresponding title by Sunday, June the 2nd.

My fingers are crossed for either Jill, or The Go-Between.

1. Elizabeth Gaskell: North and South
2. Emile Zola: A Love Story
3. Robert Louis Stevenson: The Master of Ballantrae
4. Francis Burney: Evelina
5. Willa Cather: My Antonia
6. Edith Wharton: The Age of Innocence
7. Elizabeth Bowen: The Death of the Heart
8. Philip Larkin: Jill
9. L.P. Hartley: The Go-Between
10. Muriel Spark: A Far Cry From Kensington
11. John Steinbeck: East of Eden
12. Charlotte Bronte: Villette
13. Thomas Hardy: Jude the Obscure
14. Charles Dickens: Hard Times
15. Anthony Trollope: The Warden
16. Fyodor Dostoevsky: The Brothers Karamazov
17. R.D. Blackmore: Lorne Doone
18. Betty Smith: A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
19. Mikhail Bulgakov: The Master and Margerita
20. Ernest Hemingway: For Whom The Bell Tolls
    

But I’ll happily read any of them really!

Murder In The Mews

November the 5th, 1937, fireworks night. ‘Penny for the guy, sir?’ asks a young boy, ‘Blimey, if it ain’t a cop all togged up!’ Good night for a murder remarks Chief Inspecter Japp, ‘Nobody would hear a shot, for instance, on a night like this.’

My second read for Kaggsy and Simon’s 1937 club and my second Mrs Allen! But this time it’s Mrs Barbara Allen and she’s been found dead in her bedroom, holding a pistol to her head. Both the door and window are locked from the inside so it must be suicide, but there’s something strange about the curve of her hand as she holds the pistol. . .

A young widow, Mrs Allen shares her house with a friend, Miss Plenderleith who seems just a bit too cool and efficient for Poirot and Japp. As they find more characters are involved, an attaché-case and a fast car, the mystery proves murkier than they first thought. And why does Miss Plenderleith look so anxious about the locked cupboard under the stairs, is she helping or hindering their enquiries?

This is a fun short story with Poirot and Japp getting along famously and ends with a celebratory lunch for the little grey cells

‘Upon my word, you take the cake! Come out and have a spot of lunch?.
‘With pleasure, my friend, but we will not have the cake. Indeed, an Omelette aux Champignons, Blanquette de Veau, Petits pois à la Francaise, and-to follow-a Baba au Rhum.’

 

 

The Chrysanthemums

December in Steinbeck’s Salinas Valley, a quiet month when the air is ‘cold and tender’ and Elisa Allen 35, strong, lean and handsome works in her flower bed, cutting down the old chrysanthemum stems while her husband Henry talks to two men in suits.

They’re from the Western Meat Company and they buy thirty head of steers for a good price, ‘I thought how its Saturday afternoon, and we might go into Salinas for dinner at a restaurant, and then to a picture show – to celebrate, you see.’ Really he’d like to go to a fight, but Elisa would rather go to a movie. They decide to go to a movie after dinner.

It’s a little slice of life, nothing terrible, nothing exciting but there’s something missing. They speak to each other in a tone that’s slightly formal, there’s curtesy and sometimes a jokey tone can be affected but there isn’t the spark of joy, as if routine has become their identity.

A Film For April: Penda’s Fen

Set in the fictional village of Pinvin, deep in the Worcestershire countryside with the Malvern Hills as its backdrop, the story centres on Stephen Franklin (Spencer Banks), the son of the local vicar, as he approaches his 18th birthday. He’s a boy deeply rooted in his sense of place and when he sees the village name misspelled on a detour sign ‘Pinfin’, he’s irritated but curious and discovers that the modern name for the village derives from Pinfin or Penderfen or Penda’s fen. Named for the Anglo Saxon king, Penda, the last Pagan king.

He’s rooted to his geographical place but also his sense of establishment and self is rigid. Passionate about Edward Elgar, the composer with links to Worcestershire, he listens to The Dream of Gerontius as I was listening to Marc Bolan in 1974. He’s appalled by the words of Arne, a left wing socialist writer who’s come to live in the village and convinced in his belief of Christianity as he hears it from his parents and school. But this discovery of Penda leads Stephen to question that perhaps everything isn’t quite as certain as he thought.

The ancient landscape and the modern world are entwined in a film that juxtaposes the visionary tradition of angels and demons walking the land with us, with a cheery milkman, whistling as he makes deliveries in his vest and gold chain; and the horror film trope of the car full of noisy teens who stop in the dark lane to let one of them out. . . In sometimes surreal, and often philosophical layers, Stephen begins to dismantle his world and identity. Authority and tradition, sexuality and hypocrisy come in for close observation.

Under Milk Wood

The small town of Llareggub slumbers

‘you can hear the dew falling, and the hushed town breathing.’

Mr Edwards the draper, Miss Price and Mrs Ogmore-Pritchard widow, are all dreaming in their sleeping houses.

‘Time passes. Listen. Time passes.’

The sky begins to lighten and Dai Bread has no time for breakfast. Polly Garter, the Reverend Ely Jenkins and Mrs Ogmore-Pritchard stretch and stir. To work, to school, to polish doorsteps and make the tea. In butterfly collars and straw hats, in flannel shirts and flowery blouses; the smells and sounds of the day begin. Seaweed and onions, leeks and bones; Willy Nilly delivers the post with a rat-a-tat, the cry of a curlew and the cry of a child, a pigeon coos and Mr.Pugh’s bought a new book.

‘The sunny slow lulling afternoon yawns and moons through the dozy town. The sea lolls, laps and idles in, with fishes sleeping in its lap. The meadows still as Sunday, the shut-eye tasselled bulls, the goat-anddaisy dingles, nap happy and lazy.’

The day draws in and lamps are lit, Lord Cut-Glass winds his clocks. Cherry Owen heads to the Sailors Arms where the clock has stopped at 11.30 and ‘Lily Smalls is up to Nogood Boyo in the wash-house’.

Dylan Thomas weaves life through one spring day in the characters of Llareggub; their humour and bitterness, dreams and desires are caught in their daily actions and snippets of conversation. First performed in 1953, as a play for voices, each character has their own drama to unfold. I read my beautiful copy from Penhaligon Press while listening to Richard Burton’s reading on YouTube, and read it in March for Paula’s Dewithon24

‘The thin night darkens. A breeze from the creased water sighs the streets close under Milk waking Wood.’

A Film For March: Good Morning

Good morning . . . how are you?. . . lovely weather. . . tittle tattle, pleasantries, chit chat – they’re the myriad phrases we use everyday, but sometimes small talk can get us into trouble as this delightfully light comedy can confirm.

Set in a close knit suburb of Tokyo, the women’s naturally friendly relations take a turn when they suspect one of their group has taken their clubs monthly dues. Conversation turns to gossip, speculation and unkindness between the houses until the gentle Mrs Hayashi (Kuniko Miyake) is left feeling bewildered and alone.

Her sons meanwhile are spending more and more time at the house next door watching TV and start to make demands for having one in their own house. When the answer is no and they’re told to keep quiet they decide to go on a verbal strike, silence, no more talking until their parents buy a TV. A strike they carry on at school and proves that no words at all has as many problems as too many.

How Green Was My Valley

I actually read this last year for Paula’s Dewithon but didn’t get around to reviewing it; I wanted to include it though because it does feel like a part of my life! Watching the BBC drama in 1976 I thought Angharad was the most sophisticated name I had ever heard and idolised her for it, but I didn’t realise the drama was based on a novel until I started this blog and wondered if it would live up to my expectations. Luckily it did and I was swept up in the story of the Morgan family living in the coal mining valleys of South Wales. What I wasn’t prepared for though was my reaction to the language. My dad was one of 7 children growing up in South Wales and it was as if he and all my chattering aunts were back in the room. There were phrases used that I hadn’t heard since dad died 20 years ago, ‘go on with you’ was one of his favourites and my grandmother’s and aunts’ voices came through the steamy Morgan kitchen.