Abbey Gardens, Bury St Edmunds

Abbey Gardens, Bury St Edmunds, originally uploaded by Tendence Grouchy.

I now have a Flickr photostream. I'm not promising anything particularly interesting, but if you want to, take a look.

The Blairs Have No Integrity

Another unpublished letter to the shitty Guardian, sent 17/8/05.

Dear Editor,

Thanks to a fine piece of reporting by ITV News (putting BBC News to shame) we now know there was as much truth to Ian Blair's account of how the police came to shoot Mr de Menezes at Stockwell tube station, as there was to Tony Blair's account as to why British troops invaded Iraq.

If either Blair had an ounce of integrity their resignations would already have been announced. As neither does, we can look forward to continuing British government support for war crimes in Iraq, together with further innocents shot by the Metropolitan Police.

How wonderful it is to live in a `modern democracy' (where the will of the people can be safely ignored).

Yours faithfully,

Grouchy.

Guardian Blairite Garbage

Text of an unpublished (of course) letter to the Blairite Guardian on 10th August 2005:

Dear Editor,

John Lloyd's opinion piece in today's Guardian employed what has come to be standard Blairite dishonesty, saying that in The Guardian `These pages have been host to several pieces arguing, in essence, that we British had it coming (it being terrorist attacks by those acting in the name of extreme Islamism').

What a load of rubbish. What articles is Lloyd referring to? There has not been a single one. What Lloyd is doing is following The Great Leader's dishonesty in claiming that explanation = justification. And we all know why Blair did that. Because British foreign policy has landed us in this current mess. Naturally, Lloyd attempts to cover this up.

Feeble effort, 0 out of 10, must try harder. What about telling the truth for a change?

Yours faithfully,

Grouchy.

TV Review - Hollywood UK:British cinema in the sixties****

Hollywood UK Episode Two: Making It In London BBC4 8th August 2005

This is the 2nd of 5 episodes from the series originally broadcast on BBC2 in 1993.

And so we come to `Swinging London'. Did it really exist - as famously declared by Time magazine in April 1966 - or was it just a media construct? A clip of an interview with Julie Christie (from Peter Whitehead's important Tonite Let's All Make Love in London - uncredited by the BBC) from 1966 or 67 shows her saying about the 60s, `A good time is much easier had by all than ever before'. Certainly true by comparison with the 1950s, but it was much truer for `the beautiful people' that Terence Stamp discusses moving amongst here, than for the general population. All the same, something was happening, as evidenced by the films discussed.

Presenter Richard Lester looks at these films - Darling (1965), A Hard Day's Night (1964), The Pleasure Girls (1965), The Knack (1965), Georgy Girl (1966), Morgan: A Suitable Case for Treatment (1966), Alfie (1966), Far From the Madding Crowd (1967), and Poor Cow (1967).

Darling is used to set the scene. In contrast to the gritty northern materialism of the `kitchen-sink' films of the first programme in the series (see previous review), we now have glamour with a capital G, as personified by Julie Christie. Her character, Diana Scott, is an ambitious attractive young woman who is determined to lead her own life. She wants to be economically and sexually independent. Her fascination with powerful men leads her to move up the social ladder from man to man until she finally marries an Italian prince. But it ends in tears with the character isolated and alone in an Italian castle. According to writer Frederic Raphael, the 60s saw a presumption that what was previously considered as `bad behaviour' should be accepted as the norm. So the script for Darling, in displaying Diana Scott's bad behaviour, was a social comment intended to suggest that a better society was needed - in Raphael's words, `i.e. God help us, a socialist one' (this comment says a lot more about Raphael than socialism).

A Hard Day's Night, a `documentary-style' film about a day in the life of The Beatles has been famously described by film critic Andrew Sarris as `the Citizen Kane of jukebox movies'. Yet, as revealed here by United Artists executive David Picker, the film was only made because UA would get a soundtrack album out of it. In fact the film cost only £190,000 to produce (presumably making it one of the most profitable films of all time). Writer Alun Owen tailored the on-screen characters to the Beatles own personalities, enabling fresh lively performances which captivated audiences across the world. The programme takes in the difference between the `realism' of this film and the `let's do the show right here' showbizzy nature of the Cliff Richard precedents, The Young Ones (1961) and Summer Holiday (1962), which director Richard Lester was able to react against.

The Pleasure Girls' fairly realistic depiction of life in London for girls who had just moved there - involving flatmates, independence and boyfriends - is contrasted with Lester's ownThe Knack, a more stylised film about young people in the capital. The latter utilised a high-key photographic style - thus rendering more of an advertising-shoot look - and a kind of Greek Chorus of elderly people commenting on the antics of the younger generation. Lester admits to have used every trick he could think of in the film. All this makes it something of a microcosm of early swinging London. `The knack', by the way, is the ability to pull women. The full title of the film is The Knack...and how to get it.

Georgy Girl explored the other side of this question as Georgy, played by Lynn Redgrave, was frustrated and unable to get what she wanted sexually. Georgy, homely and warm-hearted, shares a flat with her polar opposite, sexy but cold-hearted Meredith, played by Charlotte Rampling. Meredith's boyfriend is Jos, played by Alan Bates. Meredith gets pregnant, has the baby, but doesn't want it. Georgy solves her problem by marrying her old guardian - James Mason - so that she can adopt her friend's baby. How very different from the home life of our own dear Queen.

Morgan: A Suitable Case for Treatment is a very idiosyncratic film, being a re-working of a David Mercer play screened by the BBC in 1962. Mercer's own breakdown and experience of psychoanalysis appears to inform his understanding of Morgan, played by David Warner. A familiar Mercer theme, described as `social alienation masquerading as madness' is at the core of the film. Class differences between working class Morgan and his upper-middle class wife Leonie, played by Vanessa Redgrave, make them incompatible. Their frustration at this makes them resort to games and fantasies. Morgan's mental association with Guy the gorilla makes for some memorable scenes, as for instance when Morgan speeds away from the camera on a motorbike, dressed in a smouldering gorilla suit. A communist motif also runs through the film as Morgan's mother, played by Irene Handl, is a card-carrying member who regards her son as a class traitor. At the end of the film, as Morgan works in the garden of the mental home where he has been sent, and Leonie visits him to tell him she is carrying his child, the pull-out shows us the flowers growing in the shape of a hammer and sickle. The film embodied the psychological theories of R.D.Laing - an important 60s figure - who is shown here commenting on the film.

And so to a more conventional film which was one of the biggest commercial successes of the decade - Alfie. The least conventional aspect of the film was the way that the main character, played by Michael Caine, addressed the camera directly about the merits or demerits of the succession of `birds' that he pulled. The film epitomised male attitudes (Caine comments that all his friends lived like Alfie at the time) while amusing and charming the audience. It wasn't all light-hearted though, with a strong performance as a backstreet abortionist by Denholm Elliott. It contained a number of fine performances amongst Alfie's conquests, including those of Millicent Martin, Jane Asher, Shelley Winters (the `older woman'), and Shirley Anne Field. But, of course, all good things must come to an end, and after contracting TB Alfie finally reflects on the shallow nature of his existence.

According to Richard Lester, Far From The Madding Crowd demonstrated the limits to `Swinging London' - it didn't translate to Thomas Hardy's Wessex. The film, starring Julie Christie, Terence Stamp, Alan Bates, and Peter Finch was not a commercial success, especially in the USA. John Schlesinger's adaptation of the novel focussed on how a young woman could inherit her uncle's farm, then keep it and run it herself without alliances with, or ownership by, any of her three male suitors. Somehow Nic Roeg's cinematography seemed to outshine the principal actors.

The final film featured here, Poor Cow, pointed in a new direction. Directed by Ken Loach, who came from directing television plays for the BBC, it "had a realism about it I hadn't encountered before" according to Terence Stamp. Stamp also recounts how the producer, Joseph Janni, begged him not drive to the shoots in his new Rolls-Royce, because Loach "was a communist and would hate it". Loach complains that he was required to carry a huge crew for the film's production which swamped what he was trying to do. As Stamp says, the film shoot was not structured in the traditional way, with a master shot followed by medium, close-up and reverse close-up shots. Instead, Loach utilised big master shots which continued until the film ran out. He also used a lot of non-actors in his films. Of course, Loach was to continue and develop this style throughout his career.

Lester summarises the `Swinging London' period as "honeymoon years in which pleasure and personal fulfilment could be pursued as ends in themselves [but which] were bound to lead to some kind of burnout. Filmmakers like Ken Loach had already sensed it was time for a rediscovery of the minutiae of people's lives". So the next episode of the series moves on to `issue films', including some of the most important films of the decade.

Haloscan commenting and trackback have been added to this blog.

TV Review - Hollywood UK:British cinema in the sixties****

Hollywood UK Episode One: Northern Lights BBC4 1st August 2005

This series of five programmes fronted by the late lamented Richard Lester (director of the Beatles films, amongst numerous others) is currently being re-run on Monday nights on BBC4. It was first shown in 1993 and well deserves to be aired again. It is an overview of the British film industry in the 1960s. `British film industry', I hear you cry, `I didn't know we had one'.

Well, we used to. As Lester says in his introduction, while there were only two British films in production at the start of 1993, there were 76 in 1967. A statistic which demonstrates the scale of film production in the sixties, when as Lester says, `Hollywood film studios were tripping over each other to shoot their pictures in London'.

For this series, the 1960s actually begin in 1958, with the release of Room at the Top. This first episode of the series concentrates on what came to be (rather dismissively) termed as the `kitchen sink' films - working-class dramas based in the north of England. So the main films discussed after Room at the Top are Look Back in Anger (1959), Saturday Night & Sunday Morning (1960), A Taste of Honey (1961), Whistle Down the Wind (1961), A Kind of Loving (1962), This Sporting Life (1963), and Billy Liar (1963).

These films were a considerable departure from the nature of previous British films which tended to be dominated by public school types. As producer/director Karel Reisz says, `It was time to make films about what's outside the drawing room'. So Room at the Top was adapted from John Braine's novel which included `an unprecedented amount of sexual frankness'. The Censor gave the film an `X' certificate (to be seen by adults only), which the producers seized on in their marketing efforts. The story of an ambitious working class lad who manages to marry into money, but causes the death of his mistress - his real love - it left the drawing-room far behind in favour of the bedroom, and the protagonist's clashes with his `social superiors'. Strong stuff. Look Back in Anger is really included here because of its importance as a play rather than as a film, so I will discuss it no further.

Saturday Night & Sunday Morning - in my opinion one of the best films here - sees an outstanding performance from Albert Finney as Arthur Seaton, lathe operator in a factory. We first see him at the lathe as the end of work on Friday afternoon approaches. As he produces widgets and puts them in a box we hear him counting them on the soundtrack - nine `undred n fifty-three, nine `undred n fifty-four, nine `undred n fifty-bloody-five. He then thinks about the weekend, `What I'm out for is a good time, all the rest is propaganda'. Arthur is a tough working class young man who hates the thought of being shackled - whether at work or by any woman. `Don't let the bastards grind you down' is his motto. Gritty, it is, and a must-see.

A Taste of Honey dwells on the changing sexual mores of the times. A teenage girl played by Rita Tushingham, falls pregnant by a sailor, who moves on. She then forms a relationship with a supportive gay man - advanced subject matter for 1961. Whistle Down the Wind was a vehicle for child star Hayley Mills, and for my money is the only film discussed here of little importance (ironic that the BBC should have chosen this film to show after the programme - the weakest of the bunch). A Kind of Loving is very redolent of the times. Alan Bates stars as the man trapped in an unhappy marriage after a shotgun wedding - a situation that is probably unthinkable now when something like a third (if I remember correctly) of weddings end in divorce.

This Sporting Life came at a time when audiences were tiring of `kitchen sink' films. Decidedly downbeat it was not a box-office success. However, it contained outstanding performances with Richard Harris as a tough rugby league player going into a steep decline, and Rachel Roberts (also in Saturday Night & Sunday Morning) as the woman he loves. Of this group of films, Billy Liar begins to point in a new direction. It is the story of a young Bradford lad who is something of a Walter Mitty character. He deals with the tedium of daily life by inhabiting a rich fantasy world. The film depicts a fine comic interplay between its characters. But Billy is really a bit of a sad character. When the magnificent Julie Christie character asks him to go to London with her he contrives to miss the train. (Julie, Julie, why didn't you ask me. I wouldn't have let you down. Okay, so I was only ten at the time, but you could have mothered me).

A fine start to a fascinating decade then, but the best is yet to come. Tune in to the other four episodes to find out what happens next. The series does a fine job as an overview of the most important British films of the decade, but sadly there is little room for analysis. Why was it that the sixties saw an amazing upsurge, not just in film, but also in popular music, fashion (and fashion photography), and the creative arts in general in this country? And why did it die away? There are a number of factors, but no space here to discuss it. If I have the time to review the other programmes in this series I may return to this question.

Interviewees in the first episode - Michael Caine, Julie Christie, Roman Polanski, John Osborne, Sir John Woolf, Karel Reisz, Alan Sillitoe, Peter Yates, Rita Tushingham, Paul Danquah, Murray Melvin, Bryan Forbes, Keith Waterhouse & Willis Hall, John Schlesinger, Joseph Janni, Lindsay Anderson, David Storey, Richard Harris, and Tom Courtenay (not bad, eh!). And from the archives, John Trevelyan, Tony Richardson, and Albert Finney.

US Suicide Bomber Shock!!!

During the last-ever episode of Enterprise on Sky One tonight, one of the American characters, Trip, blew himself up to kill some alien invaders in his ship. This was portrayed as heroic and brave.

Don't those terrorist-commie-pinko bastards in Hollywood know that suicide bombing can never be justified under any circumstances? Don't they listen to our leader, the Great Poodle of Downing Street, who proclaimed this just last week? What do they mean by spreading this terrorist propaganda on our screens?

In future, instead of blowing themselves up to defeat invaders, characters must drop cluster bombs from 30,000 feet. We know that's okay because the Great Poodle has already done that himself - in Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and Iraq.

If this happens again I will be demanding a witch hunt - `terrorist-commie-pinko suicide bombers out of Hollywood'. Has a ring to it, don't you think?

USA Planning War Against Iran

It seems that the Washington crazies are planning to use any further 9/11 style attack on the US to launch nuclear strikes on Iran. Of course, as with Iraq, any Iranian involvement in such an attack would be irrelevant.

No doubt the Great Poodle of Downing Street would rush to support any such war crimes. Well, in for a penny in for a pound, eh? When you are already guilty of causing the deaths of thousands and thousands of innocent civilians what's a few hundred thousand more?

We have to get the war criminals out of government on both sides of the Atlantic or all we face is unending mass murder, and terrorism in response.