Harriet Devine's Blog

My Shiny 6 Reviews

This time round, I wrote fewer reviews for Shiny 6 than usual. I didn't plan it that way at all, but a variety of things conspired to make it happen. For a start, I'd been going to review Martin Edwards' fantastic Golden Age of Murder, which I read with huge enjoyment, but then one of our regular reviewers, Lyn Baines, posted such an excellent review on her own blog that I thought I couldn't better it, and asked if we could republish it, which she kindly agreed to. Then the same thing happened with Nicola Upson's London Rain -- I'd enjoyed it tremendously, but very much liked the review by another of our regulars, Rob Spence, so he ended up rejigging it for Shiny. In fact I did interview both these writers, and the Q&As appear in the BookBuzz section. Martin's is here, and Nicola's is here. I also got a review copy of A.N. Wilson's The Book of the People: How to Read the Bible, which I thought sounded fascinating. But oh dear, it wasn't -- not to me, anyway. So that one bit the dust. 

However, I did review some excellent books. One was Kate Atkinson's wonderful A God in Ruins -- I'd already talked about it on here with relation to the audiobook, but my Shiny review goes into more depth. Then there was a late addition, All the Light We Cannot See, the Pulitzer prizewinner from Anthony Doerr, newly out in paperback. I normally review several contemporary crime novels, but this time round the only one was Laura Wilson's intriguing The Wrong Girl, set partly in the 1970s. My only contribution to non-fiction was a review of Stanley Wells' Shakespeare: A Very Short Introduction, and I also reviewed two brilliant golden age crime novels in the reprints section: a British Library Crime Classic, Resorting to Murder: Holiday Mysteries, and Ianthe Jerrold's The Studio Crime, published by Dean Street Press.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

So, just six reviews in total. I feel vaguely guilty about not doing more, but I also know that's really silly. One of the great things about Shiny New Books is the way we are recruiting such a superb bunch of reviewers. I do most of the proofreading before we go live, and I am constantly bowled over by the quality of the writing that comes in. So, though I'll never end up taking a back seat (or I hope not, anyway), this is actually a really healthy sign, and I can only say long may it continue. 

Have you explored Shiny 6 yet?

The Third Man

I decided to read something by Graham Greene, in response to Simon Savidge's Greene for Gran month. But my reading has somehow got very unfocused at the moment -- I keep picking things up and putting them down again, and can't seem to find exactly what I want to read. Luckily I found on the bookshelf a large compendium volume of some of GG's novels, which I'd bought in a French market a year or so ago. But unluckily, I couldn't bring myself to decide which one I fancied. So I picked The Third Man, mainly because it was the shortest.

In actual fact, though, The Third Man is not a novel at all. Of course, as I'm sure everyone knows, it is a very famous film noir starring the wonderful Orson Welles, whose picture I couldn't resist putting on here. According to Wikipedia, 'Before writing the screenplay, Graham Greene worked out the atmosphere, characterization and mood of the story by writing a novella', which was not originally intended for publication. However, the plot of the novella differs in some respects from the film as it was made -- not that that needs to trouble us, so I'm not going to say any more about it.

The story is set in post-war Vienna, which might make an interesting comparison with The Exiles Return, which I reviewed about a month ago. But the Vienna portrayed here is very different from the rather quietly sad city of Elizabeth de Waal's novel. Here we have a city full of suspicion and fear, where crime is rife and nobody feels safe. As the novel begins, Holly Martin, a writer of pulp fiction, arrives in the city, having been invited by his old friend Harry Lime, who has offered him a job. But he is told at once that Lime is dead, a result of a street accident. Suspicious of the circumstances, he visits Lime's girlfriend Anna and later discovers from the porter at Lime's apartment building that the body was carried into the building by three men, not the two men claimed by the police. Who was the third man? Martin attempts to discover, but soon finds himself on the wrong side of the law, having disregarded the advice of the police to leave the city. He does, in the end, uncover the facts of the case, though in the process he learns that Lime was involved in extremely dubious activities. He also falls in love with Anna, but may or may not end up with her at the end -- the novel seems to suggest he does, but the film doesn't. Either way, the ending is superb, with a lot of racing around the sewers of Vienna and plenty of shooting.

This is obviously a cracking story, though one that's impossible for anyone who has seen the movie to read without visualising that brilliant piece of film-making, or hearing the Harry Lime Theme as a constant musical background. I did find the narrative method a little odd, though. The story here is narrated by Major Calloway, a British Army police officer stationed in Vienna, which seemed rather odd and confusing to me, especially as Calloway describes incidents that happened to Martin which he could not possibly have witnessed. This leads to a great deal of stuff like "Martin told me later that...", and I wondered why Greene had chosen to do it like that, especially as this doesn't happen in the film.

All that being said, though, it was a really enjoyable read, and perhaps would make a good introduction to anyone who wants to dip a toe into Greene without committing to a longer novel. As for me, I'm going to have a go at a longer one myself if I can decide which one and manage to concentrate long enough to finish it. 

 

Hitchcock mania

I hardly ever watch television - there's never anything I want to see. But I do like watch films on my computer and at the moment I'm obsessed with Hitchcock. Last week I saw in quick succession the recent film (Anthony Hopkins as Hitchcock, Helen Mirren as Alma, Scarlett Johansson as Janet Leigh) and the HBO/BBC's The Girl (Toby Jones as Hitchcock, Imelda Staunton as Alma, Sienna Miller as Tippi Hedren). The first was about the making of Psycho and the second about the making of The Birds and Marnie. Well, I must admit that the first one has more or less faded from my mind and the second one totally stuck in there. Of course its portrayal of Hitchcock as a sad sexual predator has been much disputed but as it was based on Tippi Hedren's own account I'm inclined to believe it. And I was amazed at how good (and how beautiful) Sienna Miller was - not to mention Toby Jones, who managed to make Hitchcock both creepy and deeply pitiable.

Anyway having seen these I am now having a feast of the original films. Only problem is I can't bring myself to watch Psycho which I saw many years ago, or The Birds which I've never seen and for some reason have never wanted to. But I saw Marnie for the first time the other day -- slightly strange, to say the least, though I know many people really like it --  followed by North by Northwest, which I've seen before and loved just as much the second time around --  and then To Catch a Thief, which liked the least of the three despite glorious Riviera locations, beautiful but I felt slightly wooden Grace Kelly and of course gorgeous Cary Grant.

Then came Vertigo -- I'd also seen it, many years ago, but had totally forgotten it. It's believed by many to be Hitchcock's best and last year was actually voted The Best Film Ever Made, knocking Citizen Kane off the top slot for the first time in fifty years. Well. Is it? Even if I'd seen every film ever made, I don't know how on earth I would ever make such a choice. My own all-time favourite, Jean Renoir's La Grande Illusion, isn't even on the top fifty list published by the BFI, though his La Regle du Jeu is at number 4.

But Vertigo? I can sort of see what they were getting at. It's not scary like Psycho, it doesn't explore sexual psychology like Marnie, it's not an excellent thriller like North by Northwest. It doesn't have an attractive hero who we can empathise with -- in fact James Stewart is a strangely distant, though in the end deeply tragic figure, whose obsession with a woman who died and then was seemingly, and mysteriously, reborn ends up driving him more or less insane. It's completely lacking any of the sometimes rather peculiar wit you find in many of Hitchcock's films. But it leaves you thinking, and to be left thinking is pretty much my own criterion for how good a film is. I think I'm going to watch it again very soon. 

What's your favourite Hitchcock?

My week in bed

I've not been very well this week -- nothing serious, just an annoying virus that has me running a temperature and completely off my food (this latter being not at all a bad thing). You'd think this would have been a perfect chance to catch up with my reading, but the first couple of days I didn't feel like it at all, though I have struggled through a rather less than wonderful novel by Robert Goddard called In Pale Battalions. I've read practically all Goddard's intelligent historical crime novels and generally enjoyed them, but this 1988 offering -- set partly in WW1 -- seemed to me old-fashioned, over-written and predictable. 

I'm having more luck with an audiobook -- The Fire Engine that Disappeared, by Maj Sjohwall and Per Wahloo, and the 5th of the brilliant 1960s Martin Beck series, of which I've written before. Beck doesn't actually figure very much in this novel, which is mostly about the other officers in his police station, who -- as usual -- bicker, bumble about, go off and do things which are sometimes helpful and sometimes not, and somehow manage in the end to stumble on the solution. Lots of sharp left-wing comments on Swedish society and the state of the world in general -- brilliant stuff. 

Mostly, though, I've been watching movies online. Hooray for YouTube which has loads of them, and lots of free ones. Interestingly enough they were all based on true stories. But I've given up on several because I didn't like them -- one, the name of which I can't remember, about a rather nice and pretty housewife in Texas who started working in a massage parlour and became a successful prostitute -- one, with Jim Carrey and Ewan McGregor, called I Love You Phillip Morris, which I was surprised to find quite distasteful -- I am far from homophobic but thought they hadn't managed to strike the right note at all -- and one recent one, On The Road, which I was looking forward to but got tired of all the drugs drink and e ndless sex. Oh dear -- I sound like a real prude -- maybe I am.

However I discovered an absolutely brilliant film I'd never heard of -- Temple Grandin. Starring the wonderful Claire Danes, who is so great in Homeland, this is a biopic of a truly amazing woman who has overcome autism to become a Professor at a prestigeous American unversity. Inspiring, uplifting, informative -- one to watch if you haven't already.

This afternoon I am set for My Week with Marilyn, which I've seen before. I'm rather sorry I seem to be getting so much better -- watching films in bed is not a bad way to spend your life.

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!