Powell and Pressburger made what to my mind are some of the greatest films of all time - not just greatest British films, but films full stop. In a glorious run from The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp through the The Red Shoes they showcased virtuoso direction, cinematography, and a grasp of the importance of place in their filmaking.
One of the things they did very well was evoking a sense of nature, most notably to the common viewer in I Know Where I'm Going, but it absolutely haunts all their work. If you watch Powell's much earlier solo venture The Edge of World it quickly becomes clear that the island itself is the star, and the people crossing it of no more real importance than the sheep or the eagles. It's about impermanence, more than anything, and the sense that sometimes you just have to give up on what you're doing, even at the expense of your life (whether physically, as you cling to the top of a sheer waterfall hundreds of feet above the rocks below; or more spiritually, turning your back on a way of life that has been core to your community for generations. It must have taken real guts to write the sort of letter to your laird that begged for a steamer to evacuate your village.
Where the wheels slightly come off the wagon though is with the postwar Gone to Earth. It's beautifully shot up on the Stiperstones, and around Much Wenlock. There are some marvellous trademark Powell and Pressburger set pieces - the full immersion baptism in the river, and the slow procession of the traction engine to the village show are as good as anything you will see in any of their other pictures. They even managed to convincingly portray foxhunting (albeit with what look like beagles). A common complaint of the connoisseur in everything from Brideshead Revisited to Downton Abbey is that the hunting is all wrong. But there's none of that artificial blowing the hounds along to the horn and the start of the whip - these hounds are flying, right out ahead. As an historical record it's marvellous.
I think the real weakness is the plot. Gone to Earth is an adaptation from Mary Webb's novel, rather than a Pressburger screenplay, and to be quite honest it shows. There's not much to be going on with here, it's basically Catherine Cookson avant la lettre and pretty thin gruel at that (with a slightly dubious rape/sexual assault plot thread). Jennifer Jones is not really leading lady material in this (and her accent is frankly risible - Long Mynd by way of Savannah maybe?), and the two leading men aren't given much to do except snarl (David Farrar) or pretty much stand around and invite people to walk over you (Cyril Cusack). Some of the supporting players are much better - Sybil Thorndike is solid as ever, and there's a great little cameo by the young George Cole.
It's a wonder there's any film to see at all in some ways. David O Selznick (probably seeing the rushes and thinking "what in God's name have I just financed?") mauled it terribly so that by the time it went on general release in the US there was only something like 20 minutes of the original film left in it. However, it was restored and re-surfaced at some point in the 1980s, permitting critical re-examination. This time around, the overriding opinion was more positive, but it has still sunk below the surface again - I had to buy a South Korean import....
So, what are we to make of Gone to Earth? Slender plot, variable acting certainly; but the ambition and skill of P&P manages to shine through regardless. It's a love letter to rural England, and Shropshire in particular - and it deserves to be more widely viewed. If I was trying to win new converts to the Powell and Pressburger shrine, there's no way on God's green earth that I would start them off on this film. But, if you can get hold of it, and you've got an hour or two to spare, then do watch it. It wasn't quite the last of England, but it was very nearly the last of Powell and Pressburger.
Friday, 8 March 2013
Thursday, 7 March 2013
London Welsh - part 2
5 point deduction, 5 points suspended and a £15,000 fine. The judgement on the RFU's website makes pretty grim reading.... Inevitably, Welsh are appealing. Watch this space.
London Welsh
No, not the rugby club of that name playing in Oxford - although I'm sure I'll write something when the RFU get their act together and publish their findings from the recent disciplinary hearing....
This morning I had to go up to London for a meeting. Just occasionally, despite my better judgment, it's unavoidable. The train back to Oxford was delayed, and while I was hanging aroungd on the Lawn at Paddington station I was slightly surprised to see the distinctive form of a Festiniog Railway locomotive on platform 9. Princess, identical twin to Prince - Britain's oldest working steam engine in regular traffic - and built at George England's Hatcham Ironworks in 1863. The Festiniog had 5, all to the same basic design:
Prince and Palmerston are still in service, Little Giant was cut up in the early 20th century, and Welsh Pony used to stand in the middle of a flowerbed in Porthmadog - I fell off it multiple times between the ages of 8 and 13.... I believe Welsh Pony has now been rescued and is being cosmetically restored for a slightly more dignified fate.
The last time I saw Princess was on display in the Station restaurant in Porthmadog in about 1990 - she's been rescued from there and tarted up a bit for the 150th anniversary of the Festiniog Railway (and her own 150th birthday this year). If you happen to find yourself at a loose end in Paddington, she's there until 6 weeks after St David's Day.
This morning I had to go up to London for a meeting. Just occasionally, despite my better judgment, it's unavoidable. The train back to Oxford was delayed, and while I was hanging aroungd on the Lawn at Paddington station I was slightly surprised to see the distinctive form of a Festiniog Railway locomotive on platform 9. Princess, identical twin to Prince - Britain's oldest working steam engine in regular traffic - and built at George England's Hatcham Ironworks in 1863. The Festiniog had 5, all to the same basic design:
Prince and Palmerston are still in service, Little Giant was cut up in the early 20th century, and Welsh Pony used to stand in the middle of a flowerbed in Porthmadog - I fell off it multiple times between the ages of 8 and 13.... I believe Welsh Pony has now been rescued and is being cosmetically restored for a slightly more dignified fate.
The last time I saw Princess was on display in the Station restaurant in Porthmadog in about 1990 - she's been rescued from there and tarted up a bit for the 150th anniversary of the Festiniog Railway (and her own 150th birthday this year). If you happen to find yourself at a loose end in Paddington, she's there until 6 weeks after St David's Day.
Wednesday, 6 March 2013
Behind the silence
Normal service has been slightly knocked sideways by a particularly busy period at work, and it's going to stay busy for a week or so as I pinball around Europe. But there are questions on the horizon which need a bit of investigation;
What do we think of UKIP, in the light of last week's Eastleigh by-election?
How, exactly, did Gone to Earth end up the way it did, given its Powell and Pressburger pedigree?
Army 20:20 - what does it mean for us?
In part answer of the last, first, the 7th Armoured Brigade is a number - making it an infantry brigade is not the end of the world for heaven's sake!
Watch this space....
What do we think of UKIP, in the light of last week's Eastleigh by-election?
How, exactly, did Gone to Earth end up the way it did, given its Powell and Pressburger pedigree?
Army 20:20 - what does it mean for us?
In part answer of the last, first, the 7th Armoured Brigade is a number - making it an infantry brigade is not the end of the world for heaven's sake!
Watch this space....
Monday, 4 February 2013
Some thoughts on Richard III
If you've read your Shakespeare, Richard III is practically the devil incarnate; in the first Blackadder series, he's a particularly malevolent turn from Peter Cook; for GR Elton he was the last of the monarchs before the "Tudor Revolution in Government" - the bane of an A Level student's life since the 1960s.
Problem is, of course, that not only do we know little about him, but that what we do know was in large part handed down by Tudor propagandists. If you're Henry VIII, you're a born king, with no need to polish your ancestry up a bit. But if you're before or after him.... Henry VII was a usurper - even if you accept his right to the throne there's no getting away from the fact that he could only achieve it in battle. His overall position was weak, so it's always nice in that position if you've got a friendly chronicler who can boost you a bit by making your predecessor look bad. Similarly, if you're Shakespeare, then you've got the aftermath of Henry VIII uppermost in your mind - succession is everything, whether you're trying to justify the position of Elizabeth I or James I....
Now, of course, Richard has been found under a car park in Leicester (2,500 yards under if you believe one of the Daily Mail's more glorious recent typos) - if you're a Tudor, that's probably quite fitting, if not actually better than they can ever have planned. But, as we descend into the inevitable parochial arguments about where he should be buried, and by what rite, it's probably as well to try and put him into some kind of context.
I'm certainly no member of the Richard III society, but I do feel that he needs a bit of a reassessment. The Elton view, that before Henry VII all was darkness, is clearly old hat. It's even possible to rehabilitate certainly the first reign of Henry VI, and Edward IV has always had a good press, but it's possible now to see Richard as a small part of the creation of English bureaucracy, the foundation of what, for want of a better term, was the basis of legal aid, and a swathe of really quite decent legislation in his short years on the throne which really mark him out as pretty much what you want in a late medieval king.
Of course, the big problem is getting past the poor old princes in the tower. Without going into the Blackadder counterfactual that he was in fact a loving uncle who doted on his nephews, there is scant evidence for what really happened there. I don't want to push this too far, because in historical terms it's the mother of fifteenth century conspiracy theories, but if you want someone with the motive, opportunity and means, look no further than Mr Henry Tudor, of Wales....
Whatever the truth, it's probable and (just good politics) that his reputation was blackened by his successors to a greater or lesser extent, but now that we have a body it's perhaps time for a sober reassessment of his strengths and weaknesses. He certainly wasn't a saint, but, to adapt Shakespeare's lines for his earlier namesake Richard II,
"not all the water in the rough rude sea can wash the balm from an anointed king."
And he was an anointed king - by the Archbishop of Canterbury, and, in his own opinion, by God. I'm not sure we're in a better position to judge.
Problem is, of course, that not only do we know little about him, but that what we do know was in large part handed down by Tudor propagandists. If you're Henry VIII, you're a born king, with no need to polish your ancestry up a bit. But if you're before or after him.... Henry VII was a usurper - even if you accept his right to the throne there's no getting away from the fact that he could only achieve it in battle. His overall position was weak, so it's always nice in that position if you've got a friendly chronicler who can boost you a bit by making your predecessor look bad. Similarly, if you're Shakespeare, then you've got the aftermath of Henry VIII uppermost in your mind - succession is everything, whether you're trying to justify the position of Elizabeth I or James I....
Now, of course, Richard has been found under a car park in Leicester (2,500 yards under if you believe one of the Daily Mail's more glorious recent typos) - if you're a Tudor, that's probably quite fitting, if not actually better than they can ever have planned. But, as we descend into the inevitable parochial arguments about where he should be buried, and by what rite, it's probably as well to try and put him into some kind of context.
I'm certainly no member of the Richard III society, but I do feel that he needs a bit of a reassessment. The Elton view, that before Henry VII all was darkness, is clearly old hat. It's even possible to rehabilitate certainly the first reign of Henry VI, and Edward IV has always had a good press, but it's possible now to see Richard as a small part of the creation of English bureaucracy, the foundation of what, for want of a better term, was the basis of legal aid, and a swathe of really quite decent legislation in his short years on the throne which really mark him out as pretty much what you want in a late medieval king.
Of course, the big problem is getting past the poor old princes in the tower. Without going into the Blackadder counterfactual that he was in fact a loving uncle who doted on his nephews, there is scant evidence for what really happened there. I don't want to push this too far, because in historical terms it's the mother of fifteenth century conspiracy theories, but if you want someone with the motive, opportunity and means, look no further than Mr Henry Tudor, of Wales....
Whatever the truth, it's probable and (just good politics) that his reputation was blackened by his successors to a greater or lesser extent, but now that we have a body it's perhaps time for a sober reassessment of his strengths and weaknesses. He certainly wasn't a saint, but, to adapt Shakespeare's lines for his earlier namesake Richard II,
"not all the water in the rough rude sea can wash the balm from an anointed king."
And he was an anointed king - by the Archbishop of Canterbury, and, in his own opinion, by God. I'm not sure we're in a better position to judge.
Sunday, 3 February 2013
The politics of railway enthusiasm
Over at Liberal England lately there has been an interesting take omn the politics or other wise of railway preservation, by Joseph Boughey. His take on it is certainly interesting, although I can't help feeling that there is a certain element of wish fulfilment about it - particularly in trying to equate the early railway preservation movement to modern green politics.
What I don't think is up for debate is the "small is beautiful" element of the movement, in as much as the preserved railways are often most successful when they can present as the underdog. An interesting observation of the preserved railway scene is that the more successful a particular railway gets, the more divergence there is between the aims of the company and that of its volunteer workforce. You can see this with the way people leave the premier lines after decades as a volunteer, because it no longer feels like they're all in it together. There's now a "commercial manager" where once there was the vicar's wife, and money is spent on websites and e-commerce, when they spent half of 1984 restoring an Edmondson ticket press....
In some ways this has been highlighted by the growth in "secondary" preserved lines over the past 2 decades. The success of the original pioneer lines has become so total that they are now operating at the level of doing up lineside houses to show what a railwayman's cottage was like, or building mutimillion pound interpretation centres for visiting schoolchildren. The role of the enthusiastic amateur, who got involved simply because he'd seen the Titfield Thunderbolt and didn't want his local station to close, is less clear here. If we take preserved railways as being about nostalgia, then it should come as little surprise that they contain within them individuals who are nostalgic about the nostalgia, and who believe that their own particular line hasn't been quite the same since it stopped being about an ex-industrial tank engine and a couple of Mark 1 coaches. Such people withdraw their labour and shift their focus 10 miles down the road to another branchline. The problem here. of course, is that these newer lines were often passed over by the original preservationists because they weren't as scenic, or there were problems with the trackbed - essentially, there was a reason why they weren't top of the list for preservation. What you get, then is a glut of lines being preserved for the sake of being preserved, just because the post-Beeching generation are now at a lifestage where they have the time and the money to be able to do it. It is genuinely questionable how many of these smaller lines will still be with us in say 20 years time.
The Titfield Thunderbolt is in any case an interesting film to mention, because whilst viewed now it is a bit of a curio, in context it's actually deeply subversive. What we're being asked to buy into is the idea of the local village buying its railway and running it itself when British Railways withdraw their support. In the 21st century this is a distinctly period piece, but what people tend to miss is that the villagers are not running it as a tourist attraction - their whole plan is to continue providing a service. This isn't about nostalgia so much as the much derided big society. Of course it helps that the vicar is a steam engine nut, but the whole point is that they are using steam traction because that's what everyone else is using. The 14xx tank they have might look antiquated, but it's actually all of about 20 years old at the time of the film - indeed, the opening scene shows the Titfield-Mallingford service crossing over a passing express, itself hauled by a steam locomotive. The film has been adopted by the preservation movement as a totem of the need to keep hold of the past, whereas seen in context it's actually the equivalent of someone saving their local line today and buying a Class 150 Sprinter to run it -for the Titfield Thunderbolt, steam is incidental, it's the service that they're trying to support. Quite apart from anything else, the buy-in from the local squire, vicar, and millionaire rather gives the lie to this being anything to do with "green politics" - this is near luddite preservation of the old way of doing things, by the pillars of society. That particular strain of railway preservation is actually One Nation Conservatism if it's anything.
I mention the Titfield Thunderbolt because it's based on the experiences of Tom Rolt and the other pioneers who rescued the Talyllyn Railway at the beginning of the 1950s (indeed, their initial hope was that the film could have been made on their line). Rolt is an interesting character, not least because he so quickly took charge - but that level of autocracy is common in the preservation movement, simply beacause high calibre people are spread so thinly. I don't mean that to be a pejorative judgment necessarily, it's just that when it comes down to it even the most voluntary of the preservation schemes are businesses, and they need business brains to keep them afloat - even if it's just to keep the line there for the the enthusiasts to give up their time to. Given that people who focus on commercial success have a tendency to be doing so in slightly more lucrative fields, there is consequently a need for the preserved lines to have to take what they can get. You could say the same about a local zoo, or a League 2 football club, but it remains the case that the movement provides a stage for the wannabe demagogue to strut upon.
I think ultimately the truth is that the politics of the railway preservation movement is as varied as the people involved in it. You'd struggle to get away from the nostalgia angle of course, but there is a definite appeal to the sort of person from any walk of life who wants to try and hold back the tide, or maintain a bit of the old way, just for the sake of doing it. Mr Culpepper in "A Canterbury Tale" would doubtless be campaigning for the preservation of the line from Chillingbourne to Canterbury in the post war years, just as assiduously as he worked to preserve the pilgrims' bend above his village in pre-war England. It can be claimed for the supporters of any political movement or none, but it does seem to be much more prevalent in Britain than anywhere else - possibly because we have the luxury of worrying about things we really don't need to worry about in the great scheme of things - but then that's another angle entirely....
What I don't think is up for debate is the "small is beautiful" element of the movement, in as much as the preserved railways are often most successful when they can present as the underdog. An interesting observation of the preserved railway scene is that the more successful a particular railway gets, the more divergence there is between the aims of the company and that of its volunteer workforce. You can see this with the way people leave the premier lines after decades as a volunteer, because it no longer feels like they're all in it together. There's now a "commercial manager" where once there was the vicar's wife, and money is spent on websites and e-commerce, when they spent half of 1984 restoring an Edmondson ticket press....
In some ways this has been highlighted by the growth in "secondary" preserved lines over the past 2 decades. The success of the original pioneer lines has become so total that they are now operating at the level of doing up lineside houses to show what a railwayman's cottage was like, or building mutimillion pound interpretation centres for visiting schoolchildren. The role of the enthusiastic amateur, who got involved simply because he'd seen the Titfield Thunderbolt and didn't want his local station to close, is less clear here. If we take preserved railways as being about nostalgia, then it should come as little surprise that they contain within them individuals who are nostalgic about the nostalgia, and who believe that their own particular line hasn't been quite the same since it stopped being about an ex-industrial tank engine and a couple of Mark 1 coaches. Such people withdraw their labour and shift their focus 10 miles down the road to another branchline. The problem here. of course, is that these newer lines were often passed over by the original preservationists because they weren't as scenic, or there were problems with the trackbed - essentially, there was a reason why they weren't top of the list for preservation. What you get, then is a glut of lines being preserved for the sake of being preserved, just because the post-Beeching generation are now at a lifestage where they have the time and the money to be able to do it. It is genuinely questionable how many of these smaller lines will still be with us in say 20 years time.
The Titfield Thunderbolt is in any case an interesting film to mention, because whilst viewed now it is a bit of a curio, in context it's actually deeply subversive. What we're being asked to buy into is the idea of the local village buying its railway and running it itself when British Railways withdraw their support. In the 21st century this is a distinctly period piece, but what people tend to miss is that the villagers are not running it as a tourist attraction - their whole plan is to continue providing a service. This isn't about nostalgia so much as the much derided big society. Of course it helps that the vicar is a steam engine nut, but the whole point is that they are using steam traction because that's what everyone else is using. The 14xx tank they have might look antiquated, but it's actually all of about 20 years old at the time of the film - indeed, the opening scene shows the Titfield-Mallingford service crossing over a passing express, itself hauled by a steam locomotive. The film has been adopted by the preservation movement as a totem of the need to keep hold of the past, whereas seen in context it's actually the equivalent of someone saving their local line today and buying a Class 150 Sprinter to run it -for the Titfield Thunderbolt, steam is incidental, it's the service that they're trying to support. Quite apart from anything else, the buy-in from the local squire, vicar, and millionaire rather gives the lie to this being anything to do with "green politics" - this is near luddite preservation of the old way of doing things, by the pillars of society. That particular strain of railway preservation is actually One Nation Conservatism if it's anything.
I mention the Titfield Thunderbolt because it's based on the experiences of Tom Rolt and the other pioneers who rescued the Talyllyn Railway at the beginning of the 1950s (indeed, their initial hope was that the film could have been made on their line). Rolt is an interesting character, not least because he so quickly took charge - but that level of autocracy is common in the preservation movement, simply beacause high calibre people are spread so thinly. I don't mean that to be a pejorative judgment necessarily, it's just that when it comes down to it even the most voluntary of the preservation schemes are businesses, and they need business brains to keep them afloat - even if it's just to keep the line there for the the enthusiasts to give up their time to. Given that people who focus on commercial success have a tendency to be doing so in slightly more lucrative fields, there is consequently a need for the preserved lines to have to take what they can get. You could say the same about a local zoo, or a League 2 football club, but it remains the case that the movement provides a stage for the wannabe demagogue to strut upon.
I think ultimately the truth is that the politics of the railway preservation movement is as varied as the people involved in it. You'd struggle to get away from the nostalgia angle of course, but there is a definite appeal to the sort of person from any walk of life who wants to try and hold back the tide, or maintain a bit of the old way, just for the sake of doing it. Mr Culpepper in "A Canterbury Tale" would doubtless be campaigning for the preservation of the line from Chillingbourne to Canterbury in the post war years, just as assiduously as he worked to preserve the pilgrims' bend above his village in pre-war England. It can be claimed for the supporters of any political movement or none, but it does seem to be much more prevalent in Britain than anywhere else - possibly because we have the luxury of worrying about things we really don't need to worry about in the great scheme of things - but then that's another angle entirely....
Saturday, 2 February 2013
Pause for rugby predictions....
Once upon a time, Grandstand would have been starting about now, but in its absence, let me just predict this year's 6 Nations:
1 England
2 France
3 Ireland
4 Wales
5 Scotlamd
6 Italy
Having said that, I reckon it breaks down rather neatly into three pairs, the order within each is interchangeable - we shall see.
Meanwhile, tomorrow, London Welsh play Newport Gwent Dragons at the Kassam.....
1 England
2 France
3 Ireland
4 Wales
5 Scotlamd
6 Italy
Having said that, I reckon it breaks down rather neatly into three pairs, the order within each is interchangeable - we shall see.
Meanwhile, tomorrow, London Welsh play Newport Gwent Dragons at the Kassam.....
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