DVD/150: THE BROWNING VERSION (Anthony Asquith, 1951)

Of the ten films made by director Anthony Asquith and writer Terence Rattigan, the most resonant remains THE BROWNING VERSION, released three years after Rattigan's one-act play opened.

 

Rattigan deservedly won the Best Screenplay Award at the Cannes Film Festival for his adaptation.

Michael Redgrave won the Cannes Best Actor Award while also giving one of the great screen performances as Andrew Crocker-Harris, a classics master who, after 18 years teaching in a boys school, has atrophied into a pedantic, remote man.  When it's announced that Crocker-Harris is leaving the next day due to ill health, he is made aware of the dislike of pupils and colleagues.

His wife Millie is also openly contemptuous, barely hiding an affair with science teacher Frank, but when she learns Andrew has been refused an expected school pension, she goes on the attack.

But a pupil's unexpected goodbye present changes everything...

Shelf or charity shop?  Currently living in my plastic storage box, THE BROWNING VERSION is a film that delivers a quietly devastating emotional punch.  Beautifully directed by Asquith, his film allows you to slowly side against the malign forces facing Crocker-Harris both professionally and personally.  As I said, Michael Redgrave delivers not only his best screen performance but one of the truly great screen performances; staying within the strict parameters of the character but by through the smallest, precise timing of gesture and voice, you will be totally on his side by the end of the film.  There is excellent support from Jean Kent as the vindictive Millie, Nigel Patrick as her lover Frank who makes amends for their deception and Wilfred Hyde White as the smoothly unfeeling headmaster.  A special mention for Brian Smith as young Taplow whose unexpected farewell present to Crocker-Harris starts a chain reaction.  This scene where his small act of kindness causes Crocker-Harris to finally break down in halting sobs is the film's devastating core.

DVD/150: RETURN TO CRANFORD (Simon Curtis, 2010, tv)

It's time to revisit Cranford, Elizabeth Gaskill's Victorian Cheshire village, where modernity threatens to arrive by the advancing railway.

It is 1844, two years on from the previous series, and the Cranford matrons still have much to gossip about, like the arrival of two new families: prosperous Mr Buxton, his son William and ward Erminia, and widowed Mrs Bell with son Edward and put-upon daughter Peggy.

 

Miss Matty, the gentle heart of Cranford, introduces the families where Peggy is an instant hit with the Buxtons, particularly William.

 

The railway stops five miles from Cranford as the land ahead is owned by Lady Ludlow, but when she dies her profligate son Septimus arrives and quickly signs her whole estate to the railways for cash.

 

Mix together thwarted lovers, an unexpected marriage, a derailed train, a runaway schoolboy, an Italian magician, and a Christmas waltz and you have a worthy sequel.

Shelf or charity shop? Joining it's predecessor on the shelf.  Sue Birtwhistle and Susie Conklin's production is slightly more sentimental as it was shown as part of the BBC's Christmas programming but the quality of the production and adaptation by Heidi Thomas from several Gaskill novellas is excellent.  Once again Simon Curtis' remarkable cast blend into a seamless ensemble: Judi Dench, Julia McKenzie, Imelda Staunton, Lisa Dillon, Francesca Annis, Tim Curry, Emma Fielding, Jim Carter, Alex Etel, Rory Kinnear, Jonathan Pryce, Tom Hiddleston and a luminous Jodie Whittaker all shine.

 

 

DVD/150: MY BOY JACK (Brian Kirk, 2007, tv)

In 1997, I saw David Haig play Rudyard Kipling at the Hampstead Theatre in his play MY BOY JACK, ten years on he starred in a tv adaptation, with Daniel Radcliffe as his son John, Kim Cattrall and Carey Mulligan.

In 1914, Kipling was an exponent for Britain entering World War 1 - and accepted a Government offer to write propaganda - while also encouraging his 16 year-old son John to join up.

But John was rejected by the navy and the army due to chronic short-sightedness.

Kipling pulled strings and John became a lieutenant in the Irish Guards, much to the shock of his mother and sister. 

A fortnight after arriving in France, John went missing during the Battle of Loos. He was 18.

After doggedly inspecting photographs of injured soldiers, the Kiplings finally heard that John was last seen disorientated during the battle. They never found his body.

Shelf or charity shop?  One for the plastic storage box.  It is a sombre story, soberly told.  A little too soberly perhaps as the film seems to want to build to an explosion of anguish which never comes.  Carey Mulligan is fine as the 'modern' sister who shares John's wish to leave their stuffy family home but her character fades after John's death, while Kim Cattrall is admirably restrained as Kipling's American wife Carrie but her release of anguish is not the fireworks you expect.  Daniel Radcliffe's usual gauche manner suits John Kipling well and he plays well against David Haig's all-enveloping Kipling, his stiff-upper-lip facade trembles marvellously as he attempts to hide his pain.  The most niggling thing about it all is that the poem MY BOY JACK was not written for his son but for Jack Cornwell, the youngest sailor to die earlier in 1916 during the Battle of Jutland.  John Kipling was always called John, not Jack.

"Have you news of my boy Jack?”
    Not this tide.
"When d'you think that he'll come back?"
    Not with this wind blowing, and this tide.

"Has any one else had word of him?"
    Not this tide.
For what is sunk will hardly swim,
    Not with this wind blowing, and this tide.

"Oh, dear, what comfort can I find?"
    None this tide,
    Nor any tide,
Except he did not shame his kind—
    Not even with that wind blowing, and that tide.

Then hold your head up all the more,
    This tide,
    And every tide;
Because he was the son you bore,
    And gave to that wind blowing and that tide!

DVD/150: QUEEN CHRISTINA (Rouben Mamoulian, 1933)

MGM gave QUEEN CHRISTINA the lavish treatment to welcome back Greta Garbo who had left 18 months earlier while she mulled over a new contract.

Her new contract stipulated a biopic of the Swedish Queen who in 1654 abdicated to become a Catholic.  In MGM's version she abdicates so she can marry Antonio, the Spanish Ambassador! 

The fictionalised script was co-written by Salka Viertel who was Garbo's great friend, writing four more scripts for her.

Garbo rejected Charles Boyer and Laurence Olivier, demanding her former lover John Gilbert be cast in their fourth film together. Gilbert was one of MGM's top silent stars whose career tailed off with the coming of sound.

He had left MGM earlier in 1933, so for Garbo to demand he be cast was brave.  But he was already an alcoholic and died two years later of heart failure, aged 38. 

Historical hokum but enjoyable.

Shelf or charity shop? Christina is reigning in my plastic stortage box.  It is an odd film, a trifle dead, smothered by MGM's tasteful gloss, but whenever Garbo is on screen, the pulse quickens and she works well with Gilbert, Lewis Stone (one of the seven films they made together) and C. Aubrey Smith.  Luminously photographed by William Daniels (one of her 21 films that he shot, from silents to sound): QUEEN CHRISTINA features two of the greatest Garbo scenes: Christina walking round and touching the objects in an inn bedroom saying "I have been memorizing this room; in the future I will live a great deal in this room" and the final scene as Christina sails into the unknown.  Mamoulian told her to clear her mind of all thought and just stare ahead of her as the camera moved in, letting the audience read in her face what they wanted.

Exit Through The Giftshop - Postcards at an exhibition....

Another selection of postcards that have grabbed my eye at exhibitions and galleries...

1) THE RISEN CHRIST (1521) - Michelangelo

This was bought in the church of Santa Maria Sopra Minerva where Michelangelo's glorious statue stands between the main altar and the grave of artist Fra Angelo.  It is remarkable to be able to get so close to such a life-size wonder.

This is the second version of the statue that Michelangelo carved.  He had started the private commission in 1515 and had nearly finished it when he noticed the white marble had a black streak in it so stopped work on it and started afresh.  He created it in Florence and it was then moved to Rome.  The bronze loincloth was added later on, the bloody prudes!  The first version can still be seen in a Monastery near Viterbo in Italy although it was shown at the National Gallery in 2017.

2) SUNFLOWERS IN THE GARDEN AT PETIT GENNEVILLIERS (1885) - Gustave Caillebotte

 

This was bought at Madrid's Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza when I visited their lovely exhibition of paintings by the impressionist Gustave Caillebotte.  He is still under-appreciated, his best known works are evocative paintings of La Belle Epoque Paris.  He was not only a member of the original group of impressionists but also a patron of them.  Possibly his most famous painting is "The Floor Scrapers" showing three working men stripping the parquet off a Parisian apartment floor.

But Caillebotte also loved painting gardens and the outdoor locations around Petit-Grenevilliers, a suburb outside Paris where he had a house.  He moved there permanently three years after painting this rapturous painting of sunflowers crowding the foreground of his garden, you can almost feel the sun and the buzzing of bees.  Gustave came from a wealthy family and his painting slowed towards the end of his life as he found other interests to pursue.  Sadly he died of pulmonary congestion while working in his beloved garden, he was 45.

3) STROZZI CHAPEL, SANTA MARIA NOVELLA (1502) - Fillipino Lippi

Santa Maria Novella is the huge church which faces the main station in Florence and it was consecrated in 1420, 144 years after building started on it!  It's glorious marble frontage conceals many treasures within.

One being the Strozzi chapel that is beside the main altar which featues frescoes by Fillippino Lippi of scenes from the lives of the Apostles Philip and James.  Filippo Strozzi was a rich Florentine banker and statesman who commisioned this chapel and the Strozzi Palace near the Duomo but didn't live to see either completed but he is buried in the chapel. The paintings are very colourful and very Florentine!

4) GILBERT CANNAN AND HIS MILL (1916) - Mark Gertler

 

I bought this at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford to remember Gertler's wonderful painting of his friend, the writer Gilbert Cannan. The painting has the similar colours of orange, blue and whites that featured in his anti-war MERRY-GO-ROUND from the same year. Cannan had met Gertler through Lady Ottoline Morrell and, through him, also knew painters Dora Carrington and CRW Nevinson; Cannan later wrote a novel of the artists' complex love triangle. Cannan was living in the mill in Buckinghamshire at the time with his wife and two Newfoundland dogs Sammy and Luath.  

 

Think Luath looks familiar?  Cannan had been JM Barrie's secretary and in 1909 started a relationship with Barrie's wife Mary who felt neglected by him.  After a highly-publicized divorce case Gilbert and Mary married in 1910 - and Luath came along too.  Luath's claim to fame is she was the inspiration for Nana in PETER PAN.  In the same year, Cannan suffered a mental breakdown brought on by the stress of WWI and his marriage ended in 1918.  He suffered another breakdown in 1923 and spent the rest of his life in sanatoriums.  Gertler tragically killed himself in 1939.

5) THE DUKE OF WELLINGTON (1812) - Francisco de Goya

I bought this at the National Gallery's exhibition of Goya portraits.  I find Goya a bit tricky: overly florid and over-emphatic but I was taken with this simple chalk drawing of the Duke, possibly done as a run-up to his more detailed portrait in oils.  Wellington sat for Goya after he liberated Madrid through winning the Battle of Salamanca.

The drawing presents a Wellington different to the usual pomp and circumstance portraits of him, here he looks a bit more human, a bit more unprepared and natural, he was 43 at the time.  This is now in the collection of the British Museum while the oil painting is in the National Gallery collection.

DVD/150: JEAN DE FLORETTE and MANON DES SOURCES (Claude Berri, 1986)

In 1952 Marcel Pagnol wrote and directed MANON DES SOURCES but 40 minutes were cut so he rewrote it into two novels.  Claude Berri decided to turn it into two films.|

Ugolin Soubeyran returns from WWI to his Provence home planning to grow carnations; his stern uncle César, impressed by the first crop's return, suggests they expand by buying a neighbour's field.

The owner and César scuffle which results in the owner's death. An ex-villager Florette inherits the property but she dies, tranferring it to her tax collector son Jean.

The Soubeyrans are shocked when hunchback Jean arrives with wife Aimée and daughter Manon to grow vegetables and breed rabbits, totally self-taught.

Jean doesn't know his property includes a spring which could supply water but the Soubeyrans have blocked it, Jean's desparation for water leads to catastrophe.

The Soubeyrans unblock the spring watched by a hidden, crying Manon.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Years later in MANON DES SOURCES, Ugolin's carnations cover the land that Jean failed on.

Manon is now a teenage goatherd, running her flock over the hills above her former home.  The town's new teacher meets her and a mutual attraction develops.

César insists Ugolin marry to continue the Soubeyran name, César still regrets his one failed chance of marrying.  But Ugolin obsessively loves Manon, who he secretly follows in the hills.

But Manon is disgusted when he proposes as she knows he and César caused her father's failure.

She then overhears two locals talk of how the townsmen knew of the hidden spring but did nothing to help Jean rather than provoke Cesar's anger.

Manon discovers the hidden source of the town's water so, in revenge, blocks it.

When Manon confronts the town over it's collective guilt, Ugolin loses his reason and César discovers a devastating secret too late.

Shelf or charity shop? Both JEAN DE FLORETTE and MANON DES SOURCES reside in my plastic DVD storage case but they are both favourites of mine.  While some dislike Berri's 'classic French cinema' style I love losing myself in Pagnol's tale of deception, retribution and redemption.  Both films were filmed back-to-back and while Daniel Auteuil and Emmanuelle Béart were falling in love off-set, Yves Montand suffered through the death of his wife, actress Simone Signoret, mid-way through filming.  JEAN won four BAFTA awards including Best Film and Best Supporting Actor for Auteuil but at the French César Awards, Auteuil won Best Actor! Emmanuelle Béart won a César for Best Supporting Actress for MANON.  The four lead performances across both films are all excellent: Gerard Depardieu's tragic Jean, Montand's conniving César, Auteuil's gormless Ugolin and Béart's radiant Manon.  However Montand's scene towards the end when his life is pulled from under his feet is unforgettable.