Clip from Terence Davies' The Long Day Closes posted on Youtube by Rongart)
I have been waiting for this clip to appear on Youtube for some time, and, presto, there it was today. The very clip.
I have had a real affinity for this film ever since I saw it (in the suitably art deco surroundings of The Capri Cinema), with my mother, on its first theatrical release in the early 1990s. I guess the 1990s were not all bad, then. Given that affinity, I am unable to be too objective about it. Although I did not exactly grow up in the Liverpool slums in the 40s and 50s, so much of this film reminded me of my childhood - the way that church life permeated everything and the concomitant guilt-fest, the escape from school life that family, music and cinema provided,the closeness with my mother, jealously watching the older siblings go out and being left to entertain myself, my burgeoning gay sensibility.
I remember reading a review at the time which, while positive, said that the film strayed into chocolate box sentimentality at times. But to me, what made this film even more moving is that it was deliberately dealing with a relatively happy period in Terence Davies' life when his brutal father (as depicted in Distance Voices, Still Lives (which I have never got around to seeing, but the clips I have seen on Youtube are plenty harrowing) was absent.
So, I hope you enjoy it. Who knew that Debbie Reynolds could be so moving?
(Final scene from Jacques Demy's 'The Umbrellas ofCherbourg' posted on Youtube by Ozukardozi)
SPOILER ALERT! If you do not want to know how a film ends, watching the final scene is probably best avoided. If you have already seen this film or, alternatively, could not give a fig about the fate of a bunch of sad singing French types, knock yourself out.
This weekend, Dear Patient M and I hurled ourselves onto the mattress on the floor that is currently substituting for a couch, and watched, for the first time, Jacques Demy's 'The Umbrellas of Cherbourg'. We were both a little stunned at first to realise that it was all-singing, in the way that a pre-Mozart opera is all-singing. The banality of some of the phrases being sung caused us to giggle nervously at first (as did the thought of what Aunt Elise may have been up to under her voluminous bed clothes). The immortal phrase 'Standard or Super' in the clip above is a fine example of quotidian warbling. But it soon won us over. In hindsight, I may have been wilfully blind to the description of the film on the back cover as 'an all-singing narrative feature centred around the luminous beauty of Catherine Denueve, and the joyous musical compositions of Michel Legrand.' Perhaps I was too dazzled by the front cover image of C.Deneuve in a kicky off-white coat, matching white gloves and scarf, gracefully holding a shimmering clutch. Given my breathless response to that image, it is no wonder then that when I answered Sigh, the Ex-Office Wit's text politely enquiring how I was spending my Friday night, he shot back with a (not unreasonable in the circumstances) "You are so butch". Ok, Die Hard it aint.
While I am on the subject of comparisons, 'Singin' in the Rain', 'Oklahoma', and 'On the Town' it aint either. Although there are definitely moments where it appears that perkiness is about to poke through, one can feel quietly confident that a pall of malaise will soon descend. I leaned over to Dear Patient M at one stage and muttered out of the corner of my mouth, 'Only the French would make a technicolour musical this sad.' My people! Needless to say I loved it.
This scene is uncharacteristically dark-hued. The rest of the movie is ridiculously gorgeous in its pastel settings and costumes. In fact, I cannot stop thinking about the wallpaper in Genevieve's bedroom. My thoughts about that wallpaper are bordering on the obsessive. Just as I cannot get the swooning theme song out of my head. Or the dramatically swirling snow. Or the seedy dock-side bar featuring floozies in bustiers smoking cigarettes with cigarette-holders. Or the caterpillar moustache of Marc Michel. And all of those sailors. 'The Umbrellas of Cherbourg' renders the seamen count of a Jean Genet novel scant by comparison.
You may well be hearing a lot from me about movies this year. I have recently compiled a list taken from '1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die'. As much as I pretend to despise our society's current obssession with ranking and list-making, I am very susceptible to being told what to watch or read or listen to. Even though I am not planning on shuffling off any time soon, I have realised that I suffer from a palpable impatience when it comes to such things. I tried to describe this affliction to Dear Patient M the other day and found myself saying 'You know how I try to undertake one...what's the word.. IMPROVING..activity per night..?' The moment I said it, I almost felt like blushing. IMPROVING?? How very Victorian of me.
Anyway, now that I have watched the all-singing, all-sighing, all-improving 'Umbrellas of Cherbourg' I can breathe out, cross it off my list and move on. One down, only 368 to go. Life suddenly seems shorter than ever.
As part of my ongoing campaign to inflict my obsessions on Dear Patient M, I was determined that we would get around to watching the film of Edward Albee's 'Who's afraid of Virginia Woolf' directed by Mike Nichols and starring that most celebrated pair of brawling drunks, the Burton-Taylors (for whom, it is almost trite to say, playing a pair of brawling drunks could hardly have been a stretch). But I kept putting it off, maintaining that we had to be in the right mood to watch it. Happily, we have never been in the right mood to watch it, but watched it anyway. Happily, despite my pointing out to Dear Patient M that I was more likely to be the Martha of our relationship, he has stuck around.
I really do not want to spoil this clip by enveloping it with my usual stuttering nonsense, so will just say that I find the writing devastating in the best sense of the word - so funny, so true and so sad, sad, sad. George and Martha are really just shooting the breeze at this point. They are merely exercising. It is relatively benign compared to the fun and games, the Getting of the Guests, Humping of the Hostess and Peeling of the Labels, that follow. I chose this scene for the very reason that, while it is not a pivotal scene, it is just so well written - every word counts. I am choking back the urge to say: They don't write 'em like this anymore.
All that is left for me to say then is:
Beg, borrow or steal a copy of the movie or the play.
Watch it. Read it. Try your darndest not to live it.
As part of my ongoing campaign to inflict all of my favourite things on Dear Patient M, we watched Alexander McKendrick's The Ladykillers the other night. The very concept of the Coen Brothers remake starring Tom Hanks causes me too much physical pain to even discuss it at length (mind you, I have never seen it and never will. As much as I like some of the Coen Brothers films, we will just pretend for these purposes that that particular little travesty never happened. We are surely all allowed one Ishtar in our lifetimes). To remake such a classic is sheer folly. For what makes The Ladykillers such a classic is not just the central premise (sweet old lady innocently 'carries the lolly' in a bank heist) or its script. More than that, it looks fantastic (extremely cosy English interiors and extremely grimy English exteriors) and sounds terrific (you'll never hear Boccherini in the same way again) and it has that ineffable quality known as atmosphere... It is also is one of those movies which goes from night to morning as if it is happening in real time (think of other classics that do that - La Dolce Vita and Who's afraid of Virginia Woolf? being two notable examples). It also contrasts sweetness and menace. Which is so like life, is it not?
This particular scene always brings to mind my dear departed grandma. She lived in Geelong, a small city on the Victorian coast, renowned for its Mordor-like Shell Oil refinery, its fading seaside splendour (when we were kids there was a permanently-closed amusement park on the foreshore of Eastern Beach called Hi-Lite Park. Oh the melancholy of it all!) and, apparently, its alarmingly high incidence of Satan-worshippers.
Every year she had an 'at home' for all her friends to come and pay homage on her birthday. They would continuously troop across her threshold, nattering and bearing slice, from first thing in the morning to well nigh teatime. As a child it seemed as though there were hundreds of these ladies, as if they were self-reproducing in the manner of Mickey Mouse's brooms. They had names like May Brown, and Myrtle and Viola. Every name was prefaced with a heartfelt 'Dear'. It was pleasant for my Grandma but also exhausting, but she never let on until the last old bird had closed the door behind her. She once took me aside and told me sotto voce: 'I loathe Ladies Guild. I really do. All those old ducks..' But no one would ever guess it to look at her, clutching her plastic beads to her ample bosom, having a good old chortle and exclaiming with delight at everyone and everything.
My grandma taught me the importance of having a schtick. She had her sweet old grandma schtick down pat. And it made people feel good. She wore fuschia coloured crocheted shifts, oversized glasses and her hair in a top-knot like Little My. One of my sisters even came across her once watering her cottage garden wearing an old-fashioned mop cap. She was like something from a story book and thought that there was nothing that could not be solved by a nice cup of tea.
She made us kids feel like the sun shone out of us, no matter how unconventionally we behaved. In fact, I think my father felt compelled to counter her tendency to spoil us. She had a ritual of bringing out a tray of after dinner "eats" (a strange assortment of wine gums, chocolate so old that it had turned white and occasionally something pleasingly modern like Smarties). All five of us children would be like Hungry Hungry Hippos around the small side table, hands darting and shovelling with unbridled ferocity. Dad would ineffectually attempt to slap our hands and sigh that we were a pack of vultures. We were. Actually, the fear of 'missing out' which can spring from having a relatively large number of siblings and very few treats has never left me. I still eat like it is going out of style.
In many ways, Grandma's life was no bed of roses. Her own mother always resented the fact of falling illegitimately pregnant with Grandma and the shotgun wedding that ensued. Great Grandma was apparently a stern German lady who would physically repel grandma's attempts at affection and refer to her as "that girl", all the while favouring her two younger siblings. Grandma herself had about eight miscarriages before conceiving her two beloved children later in life. She was determined to have her own children even if it killed her. She spent years nursing her husband through severe mental and physical illness, taking whatever jobs she could find to support the family during his times of incapacitation. She almost lost her son to a brain tumour when he was thirteen (somehow he survived - the doctors could never explain it). She herself contracted about five different types of cancer including mouth cancer from passive smoking (her husband smoked like a train and it got him in the end).
Despite all of this, somewhere along the way, she made the choice to be the opposite of her own mother. She never withheld affection (she used to cuddle us until we almost suffocated in her ginormous bosoms. I cannot overstate their size. They would go out of focus in photographs. She looked like an apple beetling about on two matchsticks). She was a master of positive spin, especially when it came to her grandchildren's achievements, no matter how paltry they were. She steadfastly and literally closed her eyes to anything unseemly ("dozing off" whenever anything violent or racy came on the television).
Of course she was not perfect. She could be wily and manipulative and careless with the truth. But always for a good end. She became a highschool teacher, initially teaching sewing and eventually teaching history and geography. She would airily tell people that she had never finished highschool herself. On the day of her funeral, her sister told us that Grandma had, in fact, never even started highschool, having left school at 13 to become a waitress in a Coffee Palace. My mother thinks that Grandma retired early when the Education Department started asking too many questions about her 'qualifications'.
What else?
She looked like Yoda.
She taught me to sing The Shiek of Araby.
Her favourite alcoholic drink was 'Drops-on-the-rocks'.
And, like Mrs Wilberforce in The Ladykillers, she somehow managed to outfox the menace and misery of the world at every turn.
Here's a famous scene from Yasujiro Ozu's terrific 'Tokyo Story'. I finally got around to seeing this film for the first time last week. It's strange watching this scene in isolation. Firstly, if there were no subtitles, it would be easy to think that these two women were having rather a pleasant conversation about the weather. But there's so much going on behind the smiles. When watched in context this scene really gets its emotional power from everything that's gone before. It was enough to make an old hard-bitten buffoon like me tear up.
This film made me think about all my absent friends and family. What does it really mean when we say to someone "I'm thinking of you"? I think of people constantly. There are people who would be faintly alarmed if they knew how much I thought about them. I think about people who probably think I don't even like them. And when I think about these people I wish them happiness, of course, and some measure of protection. I want them to be ok, safe, laughing.
Does it do my absent loved ones any good? Probably not. I wish that I believed that the Universe picked up on my well-wishing vibes, my 'prayerthoughts' as my grandma used to call them ("I'll send some prayerthoughts your way!" she'd say. No offence, but wouldn't it make more sense to send them to someone who could act on them? Some mythical higher being? Bless her.)
Do I ever pick up the phone and ring my absent loved ones? No. But I think of them often.
One of the fine things about having a relatively new partner is being able to inflict all of your favourite films on them (At last! A captive audience!). As a result, I have been re-watching some of my sentimental favourites with my dear, patient "M".
Last night we had been drinking Cinzano Vermouth and eating pasta which put me in an Italianate mood. Which led to me dusting off my second favourite film after La Regle du jeu, Fellini's "8 1/2" (yes, I actually have them ranked. Saddo that I am...).
I was lucky enough to first see "8 1/2" at the perfect age of about 15, in a hometown cinema, on a very hot Sunday afternoon in about 1986. There was a lot I didn't get plot-wise on that first viewing. I was too bewitched by the aesthetic - all the glamorous European Ladies with their big hats and sunglasses ("My people! At last I've found them!" I thought in my callow 15 year old manner), the dream-like tracking shots and artful use of black and white film. And, as the very concept of a relationship of any sort was as alien to me as Mars, I missed the subtleties of the quieter moments at the heart of the film which focus on the dysfunctional relationship between "Guido" and "Luisa" (read Federico and Guilietta). But this film never disappoints me on a re-watching and although it can appear pretentious and shambolic on first viewing, it does make more sense the more you watch it.
Anyway, "8 1/2" doesn't need me to sell it, but here's some things I like about it regardless: - The fact that it got made at all. It would not happen today. It just simply wouldn't be funded. It's barking. - Barbara Steele! Barbara Steele! Barbara Steele! Looking, as usual, like a glamorous wanton vampire.. - Sandra Milo! Sandra Milo! Sandra Milo! Looking, as usual, like a small town floozy from the 1940s.. - Marcello! Marcello! Marcello! Looking, as usual, louche and wearing impeccable shades .. - The music! From the witty use of classical music, the sparse, gentle strings (accompanying the childhood memories) to Nino Rota's unforgettable wonky circus tunes and rhumbas.. - The fact that so much of it was shot on a set - The fact that a film ostensibly about nothing by a man ostensibly with nothing left to say ends up saying so much.
Perhaps there is one reason why this comes a close second as my favourite film rather than a first. I must say that Fellini definitely loses points for over-use, nay, use-at-all, of sad circus clowns playing tubas. I really could have done without those. I think we all could have.
This is such a lovely trailer - it's similar to the closing of the film but is much more cheeky, relaxed and fun. I particularly love the way that Claudia Cardinale's hair is flopping about in the wind and she just doesn't seem to care...
Imagine all the people who, for better or for worse, have been significant in your life whether as current, real presences, or as exaggerated unreliable memories. And all of those people are holding hands and dancing in a joyous circle in the middle of a wind-swept field. I know I have that fantasy. Often.
This is my favourite film of all time. I think it is a sublime masterpiece which demands viewing at least once a year. Jean Renoir, on the other hand, said (in 'My Life and Films', Collins, 1974):'..the failure of La Regle du Jeu so depressed me that I resolved either to give up the cinema or to leave France' and 'I was utterly dumbfounded when it became apparent that the film, which I wanted to be a pleasant one, rubbed most people up the wrong way. It was a resounding flop..' (if ever you need an incentive not to abandon your life pursuit, you have it right there..)
That's Jean in the bear suit. Alone and exposed on stage, like something out of an everyday nightmare. Watch the shadows. There's an awful lot going on there.
Here's three ace quotes from the film:
1. The title card, which quotes Beaumarchais's Marriage of Figaro:
If love has wings
Are they not to flutter?
Are they not to flutter?
Are they not to flutter?
2. The most famous line, which in some respects goes to the heart of La Regle du jeu. It has been variously interpreted as both an apology and an accusation: The awful thing about life is this: everybody has their reasons.
3. The line which artists, lovers and lackeys everywhere must relate to: HELP ME OUT OF THIS BEARSKIN!