Harriet Devine's Blog

Marilyn

I've just been browing Life magazine website in the vain hope of finding a picture I'm putting on here later in the week and I ran across some lovely early pictures of Marilyn Monroe.  She's been much in my mind since I saw My Week with Marilyn a few days ago. It's a great film and everybody in it does a terrific job of impersonating the various famous people they are playing. But nobody, however beautiful and talented, can match the real Marilyn -- that's my opinion, anyway. In these early photos she hasn't yet become a star and Life did not even publish them at the time as they didn't know who she was, though the photographer was clever enough to have spotted something really special. Beautiful. 

Enchanted again

Having enjoyed the novel so much, as I said in yesterday's post, I was absolutely dying to see the film and luckily managed to get hold of it, so I'm now in a position to compare the two. And I have to say that unlike Teresa, who was of course the blogger who had liked the film better, I did prefer the book. But that's not to say I didn't love the movie -- it would be hard not to as it is really entirely delightful. Wonderful cast, fabulous locations, terrific period detail -- what's not to like. And I was very happy to discover that on the whole it was amazingly true to the novel, though of course, as I'd assumed in my review yesterday, the inner thoughts of the characters are drastically pruned.

I wasn't entirely happy with the casting of Lady Caroline  -- Polly Walker, though undoubtedly pretty, didn't at all measure up to my imagined image of the character who, in the book, is nicknamed Scrap for her extreme slenderness -- Polly, bless her, is far from scrappy, but perhaps the casting people thought she'd have more appeal for 1990s audiences than someone with a typical 1920s boyish figure? Keira Knightly would have been good except she was only seven when the film was made...

Apart from that, the few tweaks that were made to the plot didn't bother me at all, and in fact one of them I thought was a definite improvement. If you've seen it or read it, you'll remember that Briggs is initially very attracted to Rose and then transfers his attention to Caroline. In the novel I found this a bit upsetting and disturbing, and wondered why Caroline was so willing to like him when he'd turned into just another adoring male of the kind she was trying to escape from. But in the movie this was much better handled. Briggs does not fall for Caroline like a ton of bricks because he's got bad eyesight and so is not immediately enthralled by her beauty, which in its turn explains why she  is interested in him -- he's not exactly like all the others. However, I did wonder how, if he was so short sighted, he managed not only to appreciate Rose's beauty but to observe her likeness to the painted madonna on the castle wall. But that's a tiny quibble and all in all it was a joy. 

Going to the Pictures

 Oxford has a great many cinemas (unlike Skelmersdale, where I used to live, which doesn't have any). My favourite is not the Ultimate Picture Palace, which is quite close to where I live, but the Phoenix, the other side of the city centre in trendy Jerico. Not really sure why, as both show a good selection of independent films, but so it is. Anyway I was there a week or so ago and got talked into buying a year's membership for £25, which is a bargain when you consider that the three free tickets you get will almost pay for it. I used one immediately to pay for a film called The American which, despite the presence of George Clooney, I thought was stylish but pretty forgettable. But while I was in there I saw a trailer for The King's Speech and immediately started to long to see it. I thought I'd have to wait till next month when it goes on general release, so imagine my pleasure when the Phoenix sent me an email offering me a free ticket for a special members-only preview. And yesterday morning I struggled through the snow which has enveloped the city and had the most enjoyable time in a blessedly cosy cinema, surrounded by ageing intellectuals, watching what proved to be just as good a film as I'd hoped. 

In case you haven't heard of it, the film is the true story of King George VI, who became king in 1936 most unwillingly, after the abdication of his older brother Edward VIII, who bunked off to marry Mrs Simpson (you may have seen a rather unkind but historically accurate portrayal of these two in Any Human Heart on Channel 4 recently). George, or Bertie as he was known to the family, was unwilling partly because he liked a quiet family life, but certainly a large part was played by the fact that he had a severe stammer, so that public speaking was pretty well  impossible for him. This, or rather his attempts to overcome it,  is the subject of the film. After many failed attempts he started working with an Australian speech therapist by the name of Lionel Logue, played in the film by the wonderful Geoffrey Rush. Largely self-trained but clearly brilliant, Logue -- the only "commoner" the king had ever met -- not only managed to get Bertie speaking but also became his close friend. 

If you think this is going to be a predictable period drama with lots of cosy stuff about the British Royals, think again. The Windsors do not come well out of it at all. Bertie's father George V, played brilliantly by a bearded Michael Gambon, is an unpleasant and unkind father whose bullying certainly lay at the root of Bertie's problems, and Edward is a selfish weakling, given to teasing his brother about his speech difficulties. Many of the usual suspects are here too -- Derek Jacobi as the Archbishop of Canterbury, Timothy Spall as a very convincing Churchill and lots of others too numerous to mention. As for Colin Firth's Bertie -- well, he's tipped for an Oscar and maybe he will get one, but even if he doesn't he is as good as I've ever seen him. I cried a bit towards the end (OK, I often do) and left feeling very cheerful. You can watch the trailer here.

Mansfield Park

Good for BBC4, who showed this film last night! For some reason I had not only never seen it (it came out in 1999) but did not even know it existed. Now I am sure there are some people who will not have liked it, because, yes, it did depart in some ways from the novel. But I really loved it, and I say this as someone who loves Mansfield Park best of all Austen's wonderful novels. It's made me ponder, in a completely unresolved sort of way, the question of adaptations. I don't know anyone who liked the recent 'Billie Piper' adaptation of this novel, and many of the objections were to the altered character of Fanny Price, who was transformed into a hoydenish kind of tomboy. And yet here, too, Fanny is livened up considerably --  beautifully played by Frances O'Connor, she remains shy and reticent in public but has a whole new private personality grafted on to her. She becomes a writer! and writes all Jane Austen's juvenilia, with which she entertains Edmund and her younger sister Susan at home in Portsmouth. Outrageous, perhaps, but I didn't object to this one bit. She is also rather bolder in her interactions with Sir Thomas Bertram (an amazingly powerful performance by Harold Pinter, no less), especially when she tackles him about the slave trade. The whole slavery issue is foregrounded considerably, which actually, of course, brings this adaptation in line with contemporary post-colonial criticism (though I won't bore you with that). Sir Thomas's fortune is derived from slavery, of course, and as the novel was written at a time when abolition was a hotly debated issue, Austen was quietly raising an important topic. In the film, we discover what almost certainly would have been the case, that Sir T not only mistreated his slaves but abused them sexually.  Hmmm, I hear you say -- but believe me, it worked. All the actors were excellent, though most of the young ones unfamiliar to me. I was particularly taken with Mary and Henry Crawford, who seemed to strike exactly the right note. One of the things that is so great about the novel is the way we see Fanny increasingly drawn to Henry, in spite of her doubts -- apparently Austen, who used to read her novels to the family as she was writing them, did not reveal to them whether Fanny would end up with Henry or not, and it does remain a distinct possibility right up to the final chapter. Here, played by the very attractive Italian American actor Alessandro Nivola, Henry really did seem like a good bet, and -- as can happen in the novel -- you can easily find yourself really hoping she will accept him.
So yes, the plot was manipulated in several ways. But it seemed to me right and convincing -- I liked it much better than the present BBC adaptation of Sense and Sensibility. Why? That's the trouble, I don't really know -- I have to fall back on rather vague concepts like quality, talent, creativity. And it's all subjective, I suppose. Still, it gave me a lovely evening.

La Grande Illusion

When I did my profile on Normblog recently, one of the questions I answered was, What's your favourite film? This was one of the ones I named. Although I'd seen it at least twice, initially when I was a teenager, both were some years ago. So, when I saw it on the library shelf the other day, I checked it out to see if it really was as great as I remembered it. In a word, yes, it is.

Made in 1937 by the great French director Jean Renoir (son of the Impressionist painter) this is often described as an anti-war film, and so it is. But it takes a very different approach to its aims -- different from what we are used to these days, I mean, since anti-war films today usually show the horrors and pointlessness of war. La Grande Illusion, although set in World War I, does not show anything of the fighting. Instead it focuses on a small group of French officers who have been captured and imprisoned in a series of prisoner-of-war camps.  In this war, officers were pretty well treated in such places -- they were allowed, at least, to have food parcels and letters, and to put on shows. The chief French characters here are the aristocrat Boeldieu, played by Pierre Fresnay, the middle-class mechanic Marechal (Jean Gabin) and the Jewish couturier Rosenthal (Marcel Dalio). Then there is the German camp commandant, von Rauffenstein, played by the wonderful Eric von Stroheim. Strapped in a brace for his broken spine, wearing white gloves on his fire-burned hands, not issuing from his room until his valet has sprayed him with scent, this man has tried to recreate in  his grim surroundings a replica of the world he has left behind, and nurtures one geranium on his windowsill.

As the film starts, Boeldieu and Marechal are shot down the their reconnaissance plane, and we see them being entertained for dinner by von Rauffenstein and his officers before their transfer to the camp. Straight away this scene introduces what is probably the most important theme in the film. The aristocrats, Boeldieu and von Rauffenstein, discover they have friends in common, have both frequented the same restaurants before the war, even, as we find out a bit later, slept with the same woman. Their worlds are the same, in other words, and at this first dinner they chat urbanely, breaking into English from time to time. Marechal, a down to earth man of the people, is completely excluded. The story moves on to the first prison camp, where the two officers share a room with a number of other men, including the wealthy, good-hearted Rosenthal, who happily shares with his room-mates the luxurious food parcels sent to him by his rich family. After dinner, the real business of the day begins -- a  tunnel is being dug, and will enable the whole roomful of men to escape from the camp. When Boeldieu is rather respectfully asked if he will share the digging, he agrees at once: 'Golf courses are for playing golf, tennis courts are for playing tennis, and prison camps are for escaping'. At last the day comes when the tunnel is complete -- but only hours before the planned escape, the men are told they are being transferred to another camp. As they line up to leave, a new consignment of men arrives, and Marechal manages to speak to one of them, in an attempt to tell them about the tunnel. But the man is English, and only says, "Sorry, old man, I don't speak French".

Next time we meet Boeldieu and Marechal, they are in a new camp, a huge medieval fortress. We gather that they have made a number of escape bids by now, and presumably have been sent here as the most secure of all the camps. Here, to their mutual surprise, it turns out that the commandant is none other than von Rauffenstein, who expresses his regrets at having to incarcerate Boeldieu, who he treats with the utmost courtesy. Boeldieu, however, though acknowledging their commonality, seems a little uncomfortable about this preferential treatment. Reaching their room, they discover an old friend, Rosenthal, and soon another escape plan is underway. Marechal and Rosenthal assume that Boeldieu will come with them, but he, instead, sets up a tremendous diversion in the castle which keeps all the guards busy while the other two men escape. This, in fact, proves to be Boeldieu's ultimate sacrifice, though he sees it as a fitting way to end his professional military career.

The last section of the film shows Marechal and Rosenthal undergoing terrible hardships on their 200 mile journey which, they hope, will lead them to safety in neutral Switzerland. Subsisting only on sugar lumps, they slowly make their way over the mountainous landscape, slowing down more and more when Rosenthal injures his foot. Finally they decide to shelter in a barn, where they are found by the only inhabitant of the farm, Elsa, a widowed German woman living alone with her daughter. She gives them food and shelter, tends Rosenthal's foot, and a relationship develops between her and Marechal. But soon the men have to go, and after a painful parting they make their way over the snow to the Swiss border. A group of German soldiers finds their tracks, and we do not know, until the very last shot, whether they will make it or not.

So why is this an anti-war film? I think it is because Renoir shows that men are not divided by race or country of origin. Again and again, we see that common humanity breaks through the barriers of the two opposing sides, whether it is the two aristocrats moving in their rarified world, or the simple German jailor who tries to cheer up Marechal when he is put in solitary confinement and is delighted when he hears the prisoner start to play the mouth organ he has left on the bed for him ("This war has gone on too long", he says to his fellow guard), or, of course, the love that develops between Marechal and Elsa, who will, perhaps, manage to be reunited when the war ends. I also think that Renoir is not being simplistic here -- there are still divisions, but they are divisions of class. Von Rauffenstein, in particular, has no time for the lower orders, and frequently speaks of 'a Marechal, a Rosenthal' as if he is describing some class of animal. Boeldieu is a much more complex character, locked into his formal upbringing and unable to accept the warm gratitude offered to him by Marechal, but obviously uncomfortable with the preferential treatment he gets from the commandant. As for Rosenthal, he is obviously an enormously sympathetic Jewish character, and possibly the reason why the Nazis not only banned the film but tried to destroy every existing copy. We can only be grateful that they didn't succeed.

Atonement

Saw the movie, read the book -- in that order. I enjoyed them both enormously, but that is not the order I would recommend. Why? Well, because when I came to read the book, I found it an almost unbearably painful experience, because I knew what was going to happen. Most people probably know that feeling from when they were little (or maybe even not so little) -- reading a book for the second time and hoping that this time things will work out differently. So many things happen in Atonement that seem to be the result of an arbitrary fate -- if that had not happened, this would not have happened, if this person had not done this, that person would not have experienced that, and so on. So though it was fascinating to see the flesh put on the bones of the film -- an amazingly good screenplay by Christopher Hampton, which managed to stay so true to what is in the book, while paring it down to its essentials -- I was constantly aware of what the outcome of it all was going to be. Of course you could say that this would also have happened if I had seen the film second, but I don't think it would be quite the same. The extra detail of the novel seemed to add even more intensity to the sense of dramatic, often tragic impending events. And of course the ending -- which I will not describe in case there is anyone out there who has not read or seen it -- hangs over the whole thing once you know what it is going to be. What a novel this is! I'm sure you could be really clever and talk about how it illuminates and foregrounds the process of creative writing, which it certainly does -- but it also hits the reader (or at least this reader) straight in the heart. Phew!

Possession

I read A S Byatt's Possession when it first came out, I think in 1990 -- that was the year it won the Booker Prize, anyway. But I have to admit that I was not all that enthralled by it. Of course I could see how clever it was -- the contrast between the two contemporary academics and their Victorian poetical counterparts, especially in their attitudes to sex and sexuality, the gradual uncovering of the mystery of the letters, and above all Byatt's brilliant ventriloquism as she recreates those Victorian poems and correspondence. But as I read it it I found myself too aware of the cleverness of it all, and I got rather irritated by it in the end.
Five years ago the novel finally made it onto the big screen, but I didn't bother to see it, for those same reasons, I suppose. But I was looking for DVDs in the local library a few days ago, spotted it on the shelf, and thought I might as well give it a go. And in fact I rather enjoyed it. Obviously there were no surprises as far as the story was concerned as the film has managed to stay pretty true to the novel as far as I remember it. I particularly liked Gwyneth Paltrow (in her English mode) and Aaron Eckhaart as the two academics -- their relationship seemed to me to be entirely convincing. As for the Victorian lovers -- well, Jeremy Northam is a fine actor and I even quite liked Jennifer Ehle, although for some reason she is not my favourite actress. But I still felt, as I had done when I read the book, that the relationship between these two great (fictional) Victorians had something contrived and, dare I say it, a bit cheesy about it.

Notes on a Scandal

I read Zoe Heller's novel when it first came out and admired it very much. Somehow, though, I managed not to see the film, which I think was released early this year. I've just got around to watching it on DVD and was completely blown away by it. It does, of course, have the advantage of featuring two of the very best actors working today, Judi Dench and Cate Blanchett, both of whom are not only hugely talented but also extraordinarily versatile. Bill Nighy, too, is always great, and so, here, is the terrifically talented Andrew Simpson, all of 16 years old (playing 15 in the film). It's a troubling and thought-provoking story -- a teacher having a sexual relationship with an underage boy twenty years younger than she is -- and I found it fascinating to see the changes that Patrick Marber's screenplay had made to the original version. For one thing, Blanchett's husband, played by Bill Nighy, was an attractive, likeable man and a good husband and father, while in the book he is rather a dull and unattractive aging nerd. This meant, I think, that in the film Sheba's reasons for beginning the affair were more complicated, not at all a bad thing. In fact, though Blanchett herself has said she cannot understand a woman wanting an affair with someone so much younger, many people -- myself included -- can see exactly how such a thing could happen, and the film does not exactly condemn her, or at least she seems not to lose our sympathy. That is probably something to do with Blanchett's superb performance -- so delicate, almost damaged, confused, breathtakingly beautiful. As for Judi Dench, playing entirely against type here, she is remarkable as the very scary, disturbed, bitter, angry older woman -- though I can't say I found anything to like in this character, she manages to make one understand exactly why she is this way and to feel enormous pity for her despite her appalling behaviour. See it, if you haven't already.

Oscar and Lucinda -- the movie!

Having read and loved and blogged about the book, I had to get hold of the DVD of the film. I really thought I could not possibly enjoy it, but I was surprised to find I did. It's a somewhat curious experience when one is fresh from the extraordinary fullness and richness of the novel -- in the film, everything moves so fast and after just over an hour you suddenly realise you've almost reached the end of the story. But that being said, it is extremely true to the heart of the novel, and a very well-made film. It was directed by the distinguished Australian director Gillian Armstrong (who also made Charlotte Grey, Little Women, and My Brilliant Career among many others) and stars, as you can see from the picture, Cate Blanchett and Ralph Fiennes. Blanchett is a fantastic actress, incredibly versatile, so it was no surprise to find her so good in this. But I have never been all that keen on Fiennes and was really pleasantly surprised at how brilliantly he captured the innocence and sweetness of Oscar. I have always thought him rather a cold actor, but in this he was not so at all.  The whole cast is excellent -- I particularly liked Clive Russell as Oscar's father, a wonderful, tragic figure in the novel and one who appears only very briefly in the film. The scene where he turns up on the ship just as Oscar is leaving for Australia and has the whole surrounding crowd down on their knees when he prays was really moving. The film is beautifully shot, and makes a good job of convincing you you are in 1840s Australia.  Definitely one to watch, if you haven't already.

Becoming Jane

I went yesterday to see this film, which as everyone knows is a sort of fictionalised biog of Jane Austen. I wasn't sure if I'd enjoy it but I did. It's based on a book with the same title which I haven't read, though I've read several other biographies of Austen, so know enough to see more or less what is fact and what is fiction. The fact is that Austen did have some kind of flirtation with Thomas Lefroy, though no-one knows how far this went or how much her feelings were engaged by him. He was indeed penniless, he did indeed marry someone else and call his eldest daughter Jane and become Lord Chief Justice of Ireland. I suppose I'll have to read the book to see if this author really did uncover some new facts. But even if he didn't, leaving aside the development of the romantic relationship, I thought the film did well in its depiction of JA -- you got a real sense of how difficult and challenging life must have been for a relatively impoverished girl with such a quick, brilliant mind and such an ironic take on the society she moved in. "A woman especially if she has the misfortune of knowing anything, should conceal it as well as she can", as JA herself wrote. Some of Austen's actual words, both from her letters and from the novels, were quite seamlessly woven into the dialogue, and the film seemed to be pretty true to many of the known facts of her family life. Whether there was really a Lady Gresham (wonderfully played by Maggie Smith) in the neighbourhood with a marriageable nephew or not I have no idea, but there certainly could have been, and the scriptwriters clearly used Lady Catherine de Bourg, Darcy's dreadful aunt in Pride and Prejudice, as a model for the character. A very pleasant way of passing a couple of hours -- recommended.