In Love and War, USA 1996

Sandra Bullock with Richard Attenborough

This is a film adapted from ‘In Love And War: The Lost Diary of Agnes von Kurowsky, Her Letters, and Correspondence of Ernest Hemingway’ by Henry S. Villard and James Nagel. The book is based on Villard’s experiences as a volunteer ambulance driver in Italy in World War I and what he learnt later about people he knew there. Whilst in hospital Villard came to know Ernest Hemingway, also a volunteer with the Red Cross and wounded whilst at the front. Villard’s co-author, James Nagel, taught literature at Georgia University and was an expert on Hemingway. Villard also knew one of the hospital nurses, another US volunteer, Agnes von Kurowsky, who had a relationship with Hemingway. All three went their separate ways but after Hemingway’s death by suicide in 1961 Villard contacted and met Agnes. After Agnes’ death in 1984 her widower sent Villard both diaries and letters from the war period. All this fed into the book. The relationship between Hemingway and Kurowsky has intrigued scholars, especially as some of Hemingway’s writing refer to the romance, notably in his famous novel A Farewell to Arms.

What is uncertain is the depth of the affair and whether the couple actually had sex. Kurowsky stated not. Hemingway is an unreliable witness and his novel includes both sex and pregnancy. One complication is that Kurowsky was seven years older than Hemingway. In some letters she calls him ‘kid’. This seems to have been a factor in the end of the affair when Hemingway returned to the USA. After that they never met again.

So the book is not a factual record but rather three separate recollections of characters and events and the film takes liberties with the record in the book. The opening credits inform audiences that the film is based on a true story. As in most cases of mainstream film this is not completely accurate. Reviews on the film commented on how the narrative does not really address Hemingway’s later career, which presumably is what makes the story interesting or commercial; nor as written is there a sense of his well publicised character.

In the film Hemingway’s appearance is delayed and we first meet Henry Serrano Villard (Mackenzie Astin), a volunteer driver. He meets Agnes von Kurowsky (Sandra Bullock) among a party of US volunteer nurses; Harry immediately takes a shine to her. Then we meet the young Hemingway (‘Ern’ Chris O’Donnell), another US volunteer and chafing to be near the action. Later he makes his way to the front line distributing chocolates to the Italian soldiers; this seems to be in defiance of orders. He is injured in an artillery barrage but distinguishes himself by saving a wounded Italian infantryman. Both end up in the hospital where Agnes is working; later joined by Harry as well. Nurses have been instructed to avoid emotional relationships with patients. However Agnes has previous nursing experience at the US John Hopkins hospital and her experience there saves Hemingway from losing his leg in an amputation. He now makes a dead set at Agnes though she is at first resistant; she points out the age difference, given as seven years.

However, one night a patient commit suicide leaving an unfinished letter to his parents. All are distraught but Agnes takes the letter to her room in an attempt to finish it. Ern follows her and then dictates a fine ending for the letter. This is followed by an embrace and an ellipsis; but the later plot suggests that there was no actual sex.

This occurs when Agnes has been posted to a field hospital near the front line. She agrees to meet Ern at a village one evening. They rent a room at what is a bordello or brothel. And there sexual coitus is consummated. Then Ern is posted back to the USA. Meanwhile Agnes has also been courted by an Italian doctor and with a nurse friend visits him and his family villa in Venice. Torn by conflicting emotions Agnes agrees to marry the doctor and writes to Ern ending the relationship.

The final part of the film is invention. Agnes again changes her mind and breaks off with the doctor. She then visits New York and meets Harry. He tells her that Ern is at his family home and his letters are ‘raging and rambling’. Harry advises Agnes to visit Ern. She does and finds him fishing at local lake; something he had talked to her about in Italy. But Ern tells her

‘it wouldn’t work, not now’.

Agnes leaves whispering

“I love you” and adding to herself, “his pride meant he wasn’t able to forgive me.”

The film has very good production values. The production design: the costumes and props: and the  cinematography are all excellent,  as are the opening credits. The film uses locations in the north of Italy and in Venice to great effect. And the narrative provides space for Italian characters and plotting including Italian medical staff: Italian residents and citizens: and the Italian military. There is both English and Italian dialogue, with most of the latter translated in subtitles. This is a distinctive feature of what is essentially a Hollywood-style production. The production crew includes a number of craft people who had worked on other Attenborough projects. These include Production Design by Stuart Craig: Costumes by Penny Rose: Cinematography by Roger Pratt: and Editing by Lesley Walker.

The scripting involved a number of writers, however, Dimitri Villard, [whose father co-wrote the source book], worked on the screen story and was a producer. And Diana Hawkins, Attenborough’s long-time collaborator, was a co-producer. The attention given to Italy and to Italians widens the sense of the world of the story. It also provides settings that contribute to the atmosphere, and in the case of the Venetian villa, sumptuous sequences.,

The cast are good overall. Sandra Bullock and MacKenzie Astin are both convincing. Chris O’Connell tends to perform on the surface. Some of his sequences work well but he does not really generate the passion the character should feel. And, partly because of the writing, he is not really convincing as this emerging literary talent. Ingrid Lacey as fellow nurse Elsie ‘Mac’ MacDonald is good; as is Emilio Bonucci as Dr. Domenico Caracciolo, who provides an Italian romantic interest. The supporting cast are generally fine and convincing.

The film did well at the box office but not with the critics. One reviewer caustically claimed,

“Ernest Hemingway’s early life with all the stuffy tropes that the author would have excised in a second draft.”

Whilst the doyen critic Robert Ebert wrote,

“In Love and War is not much interested in Ernest Hemingway’s subsequent life and career, and even in its treatment of this early period, it doesn’t deal with themes such as his macho posturing, his need to prove himself, his grandiosity.”

It is interesting to compare this film treatment with Hemingway’s novelistic treatment of the affair and the two film versions of that work. Hemingway had a spare, muscular style. The novel embroidered both the affair and Hemingway’s experiences and presented these in the first person. It was also censored and considered over-explicit for the time. It offers the experience of War, or at least the particular type of war found early in the C20th. And it creates a powerful sense of the relationship and its problems.

The first film version was made in 1932 by Paramount Pictures. It was directed by Frank Borsage, an expert in creating on-screen romance. The two stars were Helen Hayes and Gary Cooper; the latter not the upright character he played in later years. The film compresses, changes and adds to the novel’s plot. But there is real chemistry between Hayes and Cooper and the romance, with a tragic conclusion, is powerful . In 957 David O Selznick produced a new version; so, of course, it starred Jennifer Jones playing opposite Rock Hudson, a popular romantic lead. The film opened out the story with Italian locations and much more background. But Jones and Hudson failed to create the romantic emotion of the earlier version. The 1996 In Love and War is much for effective than the 1957 film in its use of a wider story: locations and costumes: and a fuller background. But it does not generate the emotional power of the 1932 version. Interestingly neither does it generate the emotional power of Attenborough’s earlier Shadowlands; likely the closeness of that story to his own early years of adulthood had an effect.

Neither the book or the three films actually address the politics of World War I or those involved in the campaigns between Italy and Austria. Ironically the 1932 film version was banned in an Italy that succumbed to fascism after the war.

In colour and Panavision 2.35:1, running time 113 minutes

 

 

The Human Factor, Britain 1979

Richard Attenborough, Nicol Williamson, Robert Morley and Derek Jacobi [deceased]

This was Attenborough’s last screen appearance for over a decade as he concentrated on working as a producer and director. Attenborough’s second film with Otto Preminger turned out a lot better than the first, [Rosebud].  This might be because it was a British production; though in fact it was produced by Preminger working with the Rank organisation. More likely the improved quality was down to the source material: Graham Greene’s novel from 1973: and the writer who adapted the novel, Tom Stoppard. This was early in Stoppard’s career as a screenwriter, but he went on to work on the very successful John le Carré adaption, The Russia House (1990). This and the Preminger film were both spy stories. However, Greene had wanted to produce a study which avoided the violence common in the genre, and one that focussed on characters in the activity. Greene, like le Carré, had known the world of British spying in the Philby era; Greene in fact knew Philby personally. As in le Carre’s fiction, the affect of this can be seen in both the novel and the film.

The main character is Maurice Castle (Nicol Williamson) who works in the African section of MI6. We learn that in an earlier period he was stationed at the British Embassy in South Africa; a spy posing as a writer. We also learn that his reason for leaving that State, [in the Apartheid era] was his relationship with a young Bantu woman, Sarah (Iman); now his wife and the mother of a young son, Sam (Gary Forbes). Castle’s colleague in the same office is the younger Arthur Davis (Derek Jacobi). He is less pernickety than Castle and is also restless in an office environment.

The new security chief is Colonel Daintry (Richard Attenborough). He is warned by a superior officer, Sir John Hargreaves (Richard Vernon), that they suspect someone is passing information to the Soviet Intelligence. The key officer in the plot is Doctor Percival (Robert Morley). Percival has some function at the Porton Down Biological Warfare Centre. He is also a ruthless figure in the organisation. Davis becomes the suspect and information passed to him, but which he gossiped to Castle, provides the evidence. Percival favours eliminating him to avoid a public scandal. He joins Davis in night-time entertainment as Davis drinks quite heavily. This enables Percival to use a secret poison which leaves little trace.

Castle feels guilty about Davis’ death; especially as he is actually the mole, [.i.e. an enemy agent in the intelligent network). He passes information because of his experience in South Africa. The police there identified his relationship with Sarah and tried to blackmail him. A friend, Matthew Connolly (Tony Vogel), also a member of the Communist Party, helped him and Sarah escape to Britain. Without any conviction or monetary interest Castle passes information to Soviet agents in Britain as a sort of thank you.

Matters come to a head when a senior officer in South African intelligence visits London. Cornelius Muller (Joop Doderer) is the same officer who interrogated Castle years earlier. Castle is forced to liaise with Muller, who reveals that Connolly died in police custody. Then, at a secret meeting attended by Castle, Muller reveals a plan to eradicate insurgents in South Africa. Castle, following Davis’ death, had ceased passing information to the Soviets. But he is so appalled by this that he passes the plan on to his Soviet contact.

Muller is now suspicious of Castle and passes this on to the Hargreaves. Daintry investigates Castle but he is able to flee with Soviet assistance before being arrested. He and Sarah pretend they are separating and she and Sam go to stay with Castle’s mother (Ann Todd). Castle reaches Moscow safely but discovers that the British State will prevent Sarah joining him by preventing her taking her son, Sam, with her. The film ends with a despairing Castle sitting in his small Moscow flat by a dangling telephone, on which he had just finished talking to Sarah.

The plot certainly avoids violence; the only casualty is Castle’s dog, Buller, a boxer, put down when Castle flees. The British MI6 is a familiar class orientated organisation. One sequence has Daintry visiting Hargreaves’ estate for a shooting weekend, which includes a secret conference with Hargreaves and Percival. But that very class bound state leads to a leadership that is markedly inefficient. The chiefs are aware of Castle’s problems and why he left South Africa, but seem incapable of putting two and two together. It is the visiting Muller who makes the connection. This is a service recognisable from the le Carré stories, or on a lighter note, the adaptation of another Greene novel, Our Man in Havana 1959). The espionage techniques are familiar from this type of spy story; thus the communication code used by Castle involves duplicate copies of a classic novel. And the bookseller is part of the network; there is a nice touch when he offers Castle a Trollope novel to take to read in Moscow. Percival’s rather nasty practices are a little out of the ordinary

At the centre of this web of intrigue is Castle. He is really administrative material rather than spy material. When he puts the dog down he makes a mess of this; fortunately off-screen. And he is led rather than leading,  both at work: at home: and with the Soviet agents. Nicol Williamson is apt for this type of role. He performs it with real conviction and is completely convincing. What is in effect a downward spiral achieves a tragic tone.

Sarah is played by Iman; a model making her first film appearance. Unfortunately it shows. There is not a real chemistry between her and Williamson, though they are supposed to be driven by real passion. And there is little change in her demeanour whether things appear alright or, later in the film, are clearly heading for catastrophe. The film uses an extended flashback to show how the couple met; their developing affair: the actions of the South African security: and their flight, first to Botswana and then to Britain. She  appears to have been included early on in the production; one possible performer for Castle was, it seems, turned down because he was shorter than her.

Richard Attleborough’s Daintry is well done. Though not explicit his role as security chief seems to follow from his military rank. At time he seems  a little out of his depth; and he is clearly shocked when Percival suggests eliminating Davis. And he is vulnerable as well: bought out when he takes Castle along as a shield from his ex-wife at a reception for his newly married daughter. Interestingly, he heads the cast list: still a major star. Morley as Percival and Jacobi as Davis are both excellent. Morley’s Percival is really a monster, but believably so. And Jacobi’s Davis is well represented as out of his depth; he is pining unsuccessfully for the office secretary. The supporting cast are effective, especially Doderer as Muller.

The production values are fine. Mike Malloy’s cinematography suggests an observational mode at times; in keeping with Preminger’s familiar style. The film combines sets and locations: and the flashback was shot in Kenya. The scripting of the characters and dialogue is fine. And there are some almost sardonic sequences that fits with Greene’s stance. One is the hosting of the shooting weekend. The other is an evening when Castle accompanies Davis and Percival to a night club. The entertainment includes a banal African-style dance; reminding viewers of how poorly contemporary culture embraced black Africans. This, and the final shot of the film, have been added to plot of the novel; otherwise it follows the book fairly closely. But the narrative itself often lacks drive. This reflects the ambience of the British secret service  then, but it also leaves the audience wondering what next, and possibly speculating to that effect.

In colour, 1.85:1, running time 115 minutes

 

And Then There Were None, Italy / West Germany / France / Spain / Britain / Iran 1974

Adolpho Celi, Gert Frobe, Stephane Audran [facing away], Richard Attenborough, Herbert Lom, Charles Aznavour and Elke Sommer with Oliver Reed on the stairs.

“in February 1974 I left for Isfahan in Iran to appear in yet another version of Agatha Christie’s Ten Little Indians, this time under the title of Then There Were None. The film itself was pretty dreadful; nevertheless the salary that I received allowed me to pay off my debts, reduce my overdraft to more reasonable proportions and keep going for a further few months.” (In Search of Gandhi, page 135).

This was a multi-country European production, reflected in the multi-national cast; the original title was  Ein Unbekannter rechnet ab. It is an adaptation of a novel by Agatha Christie [not credited]; originally published under the title ‘Ten Little Niggers’ and later understandably changed to ‘Ten Little Indians’. There are  a number of other adaptations, and theatrical and television versions. This one was produced by Harry Alan Towers, an independent radio and film producer and writer. He had already produced a version in 1965 and this later version usually the same screenplay. The 1965 version has a predominately British cast and was initially screened in Austria. This version was shot in various location in Iran, including the ruins at Persepolis. The film was directed by Peter Collinson, whose output included the very successful The Italian Job. (1969).

The film uses a traditional children’s poem, ‘Ten Little Indians’, a model of this is one of the props; guests are killed off one by one. visualised on the model. So, ten guests arrive in a remote Iranian hotel. They discover that none of them seem to have met their mysterious host. A recording then accuses each person of a crime. Following this, the guests die one by one; and all in some distinctive manner. The penny drops; the killer is one of the guests. Only at the end is the killer revealed: it is Judge Cannon (Richard Attenborough): he accepts that he knowingly sentenced an innocent man to death. He now confronts the surviving guest Vera Clyde (Elke Sommer), suggesting that she is  alone and beyond rescue, and so will commit suicide. He has helpfully provided a noose and, suffering from an incurable decease, takes poison. At the last minute another survivor appears, Hugh Lombard/ Charles Morley (Oliver Reed) and he and Vera leave together.

Attenborough is effective as the murderous judge, disguising his malevolent intent to the final reveal. The persona is a familiar one from earlier films; a traditional establishment figure. The two survivors, Reed and Sommer, are pretty obviously survivors from early on; this is as much to do with the way their characters are written as to their performances. The rest of the cast do not get sa great opportunity to display their talents, though Charles Aznavour as Michael Raven gets to sing a French song. Herbert Lom does suggest something likely suspect, and any guesses as to the identity of the killer rests on Attenborough and Lom. The voice on the recording is by Orson Welles, one pleasure in the movie.

The film looks nice and there is some excellent use of the locations, both the hotel and the ruins. The editing manages to tie together several different locations which include separate places for the hotel interiors and exteriors. There are some noticeable errors, including a sequence at night in the hotel but apparently daylight in the exterior.

Black and white, 1.66:1, 98 minutes

A Severed Head, Britain 1971

Richard Attenborough and Lee Remick

The film was made by British based Winkast Film Productions which operated from the 1960s until the early 1980s. It is an adaptation of a novel by Iris Murdoch published in 1961; it was adapted as a play by Murdoch together with J. B.  B. Priestley. The novel is intended as a satire of adult middle class people involved in sexual and partly romantic shenanigans. The British middle class term is ambiguous, here the characters are affluent professional people, with expensive town houses and seemingly no noticeable deprivations. The novel was adapted for film by Frederic Raphael, born in the USA. Raphael worked as a writer in Britain in a number of different forms, including screenplays. He was popular and successful in this period; his most notable success on film was Darling (1965). The film was directed by Dick Clement. He worked as a writer, producer and director, most frequently in partnership with Ian La Frenais. Most of their work was for television; there are a few films in the 1970s.

The film opens with a set of unusual credits, screened over a rotating turn-table with accurately produced dolls of the leading characters. One of these is Martin Lynch-Gibbon (Ian Holm) and the film cuts from the Martin doll to the actual Martin. He runs, possibly owns, a wine merchant and we first see him tasting wine with either colleagues of customers. Wine is one of the central motifs in the film. We constantly see Martin carrying wine to friends and associates: people opening and drinking wine: with wine representative of the affluence of their life styles.

Martin is married to Antonia, (also Tony – Lee Remick). Antonia is receiving treatment from psychoanalyst Palmer Anderson (Richard Attenborough). We, and Martin, soon learn that Antonia and Palmer are having an affair. Indeed Antonia announces she will leave Martin and co-habit with Palmer. However, Martin himself is involved in an affair with Georgie Hands (Jennie Lindon). She teaches textile design at a London University College. Her flat, alongside the river, has a large, old-fashioned loom which dominates the space.

Palmer and Antonia condescend to Martin. They insist he move out of his and Antonia’s joint house. They find him a flat and employ an interior design professional to overlook the décor and furnishings. We meet Martin’s sister and brother when he visits them in the country. The brother, Alexander (Clive Revill) is a sculptor and meant to be something of a ‘free spirit’. And Palmer and Antonia are visited by Palmer’s sister, Honor Klein (Clare Bloom) a psychology academic at Oxford.

Matters complicate. Martin discovers that Alexander is having an affair with Georgy. He remarks bitterly that Alexander had always taken up his girlfriends after a parting. Martin starts to develop an obsession with Honor, though this is a spiky relationship. Then  he discovers her in bed with Palmer; who justifies the affair on the grounds that she is only his half-sister. Martin does not tell Antonia of this, but she soon turns up at their old house neurotic because Palmer has become cold and disturbing. This presumably is because his fear of being found out.

Pressures mount on Georgy  as well and she attempts suicide. The other four main characters visit her in hospital; the only time in the film that we see them all together in one room. Antonia and Martin resume living in their old house; though there are signs that Antonia has another infatuation. Alexander and Georgy marry. But she is being treated by Palmer The film ends, as it opened, with Martin wine tasting at his firm. However, this time Honor appears and they embrace.

Honor provides a line to Martin explaining the title;

“I am an object of terrible fascination to you, A Severed Head such as primitive tribes used putting a morsel of gold on its tongue to make it utter prophecies, as real people you and I do not exist for one and other.”

Not that helpful actually, but Murdoch’s books are full of academic references.

The film retains a sardonic tone which is recognisably her style. But it also has some whimsical sequences that are less so. Martin visits Palmer and Antonia at a health farm; Palmer is a hypochondriac. They sit in hoods drinking organic tea. At another point, when Martin has only just met Honor, she demonstrates her limited skills with a samurai sword. But the recurring motifs  is the wine and wine tasting. A bottle of red is spilt on a white carpet, both at Palmer’s house and at Martin’s original house. Wine tasting has much significance but little actual substance; think of the superior satire in Sideways (2004). It is an apt comment on the characters. They are though not all equally inconsequential. Palmer and Antonia both seem all on the surface; and in  a lesser role this applies to Alexander. Honor is deliberately mysterious, which disguises a likely lack of substance. Martin however has moments of genuine emotion. This comes across in a fantasy sequence, though not completely successful. It combines imaginings of the other characters with what appear to be flashbacks. It occurs in the, for now, uninhabited but still furnished joint house. It is here that Martin spills the bottle of wine; and it was he that spilt the other bottle in Palmer’s bedroom. But this more powerful scene of emotion does not seem to affect him for any length of time.

The one person with genuine and powerful emotion is Georgy. It comes across in later scenes with Martin well before her attempted suicide. She is, in one sense, a victim of the other leading characters. Interestingly she does not project an upper middle class persona, as do the rest.

Attenborough plays Palmer well. He could almost be Attenborough’s earlier Cox moved up into the world of Uncle Bertie. He is smoothly convincing and Martin and Antonia falling for it can be understood. This surface drops once, when his sexual secret might be discovered. Ian Holm is excellent at Martin. He manages changes from blandness to emotion and back again with aplomb. Jenny Linden is excellent as the only really emotional character in the film. Honor and Alexander are undeveloped, almost ciphers played with ease by Bloom and Revill. Lee Remick plays Antonia with skill but this character also is seriously underwritten. She alone does not have any moments of substance. The character almost seems a subject of misogyny.

The production values are fine, but despite the use of actual locations at times it does have the feel of a television movie. It was filmed in Eastmancolor and the by now standard 1.85.1 The music is intermittent; most often accompanying a movement for Martin in the plot. There are chords of Japanese style music to accompany the samurai sword.

It does not seem to have had wide distribution outside Britain. I can imagine that the particular British habits of the characters would have seemed strange rather than funny to foreign audiences.  It is in one sense of a sexual merry-go-round; a sort of British version of the far superior La Ronde, Max Ophuls fine 1950 drama.

Running time 127 minutes

 

Middlemarch (1994) vs Days of Hope (1975)

The BBC’s Dorothea and Will

The BBC is currently broadcasting and adaptation  of Vikram Seth’s novel, ‘A Suitable Boy’. A post on ‘The Case for Global Film’, ‘A suitable writer for A Suitable Boy’,  includes the question as to whether Andrew Davies was the right choice to adapt this highly praised novel from the Indian sub-continent for television. This reminded me of an article I wrote in the 1990s when Andrew Davies adapted the seminal English novel ‘Middlemarch’ [by George Eliot) for BBC television in 1994. My argument then would raise questions about Davies suitability, not because of his ethnicity, but because of the political and aesthetic values that inform his work. He is clearly a skilled worker at adaptation but he also carries the baggage of the British class and colonial values. So I present my original article below, with some necessary amendments for the changes in time; hopefully it will prove interesting. The article compared the adaptations on BBC television of Eliot’s novel and a series written by Jim Allen and directed by Ken Loach, Days of Hope, that followed several working class characters through World War I up until the seismic General Strike of 1926.

Dorothea Brooke, heroine of George Eliot’s ‘Middlemarch’, was an important icon for the women’s movement of the 1970s. In Andrew Davies’ 1994 adaptation, she takes a back seat to the less substantial pairing of Lydgate and Rosamund Vincy. A rather different treatment of gender, class and politics is found in the earlier four part series Days of Hope; which was seen as controversial at the time, both in the mainstream media and amongst academics. I have included production detail and the main sources in  notes at the end.

My starting point was some teaching with students on City & Guilds 7700. We were covering the critical analysis module using some Open University materials’ which compared, in terms of competing realisms, four 1970s television programmes; The Twenties Revisited, Nine Days in ’26, Upstairs Downstairs and Days of Hope . All the programmes dealt in some way with the 1926 General Strike, and the OU commentators compared the interests and values and the formal strategies employed by the programmes, and in doing so discussed some of the strands of a somewhat academic controversy surrounding the concept of realism and Ken Loach’s Days of Hope (also ‘authored’ by writer Jim Allen and producer Tony Garnett).

Filming ‘Days of Hope’

Loach was a filmmaker who figured prominently in our examples from film and television (e.g. Cathy Come Home, BBC 1966) and the students were familiar with his work. By chance, all this happened during transmission of BBC’s Middlemarch. So we were able to discuss the question of realism, style and content, the interests and values and their boundaries in British television, and some key developments within it over two decades.

I also re-read the series of articles, appearing mainly in the journal ‘Screen’ where the debate about realism and Days of Hope was published; re-confirming my earlier suspicion that the whole critique of Loach’s work and its realist approach was flawed with questionable assumptions. A useful antidote to this was an article by Colin Sparks  in the political journal ‘International Socialism’ which amplified a point made by Colin McArthur in the debate in ‘Screen’;  that there were so many different examples of realism and that the concept was general beyond belief. One example which showed some of the traits of a realist text was the Hollywood musical, but did anyone imagine that audiences read musicals as real? More seriously, the real world was more than a set of appearances, authentic scenery, accents, costumes etc.: it was a set of social relations, and even when the argument about realism was applied to the nineteenth century novel, it failed to account for the reality for the readers of the frequently dramatised and heightened relations of literary texts.

To take the two examples mentioned, George Eliot’s ‘Middlemarch’ and Jim Allen’s Days of Hop‘; while both take great pains to represent the visual, aural and cultural surface of the region and time in which their stories are set, it is apparent to the reader that the narrative foreshortens the historical action, selecting from it and re-emphasising some events rather than others.

In fact, both works are retrospective, returning to a period about fifty years earlier that has become significant because of the replaying of particular social contradictions around class, but with Eliot this is the democratic movement of the 1830s and 1870s, with Allen it is the industrial movements of the 1920s and 1970s.

There are a number of similarities between the two stories: each centres on a woman who marries a man above herself in the social structure and whom she looks up to both culturally and politically. In the course of the narrative this man is discredited and the heroine has to break free from him. (Dorothea – Casaubon, Sarah – Philip). Crucial in this turnabout is another man, of lower class origins than the husband, and to begin with also seen as culturally or politically weak. His developing relationship with the heroine parallels her distancing from the husband figure. (Dorothea – Will, Sarah – Ben). By the end of the story, this new pairing is embarked on the political project which is privileged by the narrative. Despite Ben and Sarah being brother and sister, the other pair is not really more sexual. In fact, both stories restrict any reference to sexuality to the actual problem relationship between husband and wife.

The political strands of the stories also parallel. Eliot portrays the disruption in bourgeois Middlemarch’s lives of the agitation and conflict surrounding the 1832 Reform Act. Equally disruptive is the arrival of the railways, the manifestation of the new class power that was one of the most powerful contradictions fuelling reform. Nearly a century later, and from a working -class perspective, Allen (with Loach et al) portrays the disruptions consequent on revolutionary class politics, centring on contending class fractions for leadership of the new working-class movement, which in Britain came to a head around the General Strike. The other manifestation of economic and class struggle is the re-alignment of capital following the First World War and the increasing importance of imperialist exploitation. The ideological differences between the two narratives can be ascribed to both temporal and political changes; but it is interesting that there are such strong similarities in the narrative structures. This is partly due to the common political intentions of Eliot and Allen; Loach. Both works aim to arouse the sympathy of the reader for the representative characters and against the social oppression and exploitation they suffer. Both use facets of the melodrama of protest model, though the modern work is more centrally protest.

Of course, Eliot is writing a novel, Allen (with Loach and Garnett and the rest of the crew) are making a film. And the form used by the latter has much more in common with film and television drama, like the BBC version of Eliot’s novel. For this version, the key members of the production team all shared some notion of producing a realist work:

“. . . if you define realism as portraying life with all its warts rather than an idealised form of life as you would like it. Realism is the way we’ve done it.”

The OU articles examined questions of form and style by comparing Days of Hope with the episode of Upstairs Downstairs which dramatised the days in which the General Strike occurred. The latter shares the standard and traditional forms of television drama (itself very similar to the conventions of the Hollywood Cinema). The values of the drama are carefully embodied in the characters, the viewer is placed by both character and scene position and that of the camera to facilitate identification with the dominant character and message. The former appears less carefully structured, having the look and sound more associated with documentary. Characters and events seem to stumble into view rather than seamlessly unfold. One of my favourite such moments is in the last episode of Days of Hope, when Philip, fearful of the growing extremism of Ben and Sarah, arrives at a Council of Action meeting. While he (and we) can hear the discussion in the meeting, he and we (via the camera) have to struggle past children playing with a makeshift shying stall, featuring Churchill and Baldwin as cardboard cut-outs.

The household arranged by class

The Allen/ Loach work is doing more than just recreate the documentary mode, or mark itself off from traditional costume drama; it is providing a way of seeing/ hearing that attempts to articulate the way workers usually see and learn. Fliot’s novel, while constructed round a middle-class character, also includes working-class views and expressions. In an excellent analysis, Andrew Britton has exemplified such an instance while critiquing simplistic notions of realism. His points about Eliot’s authorial voice are very important:

“(she) emphatically alerts us to . ” . the experience, the dramatic world, the narrative voice, the reader. The foregrounding of narration has the effect of compelling us to reconsider our reading and perhaps criticise it’.”

Yet one of the main authors of the television version preferred to:

“‘let the tale tell itself . . . one thing I’ve always hated about George Eliot is the way she’ll write a brilliantly dramatic and moving scene and then spend the next few pages pointing out the subtleties, just in case we missed them”

It is Davies who misses the point. For me, the BBC version bears all the recognisable facets of a programme like Upstairs Downstairs. Visually, the programmes replicate the conventions of mainstream television and film dramas, asking the viewer to experience the story and identify with the characters, but not encouraging distancing and questioning. The drama centres on the several romances which are affected by the social movements, whereas Eliot’s novel seems to me to do the reverse. Most strongly this comes out in the fate of Eliot’s two great motifs, political reform and the economic imperative of railway development.

The adaptation opens with the arrival of a character on the new-fangled train which is to so disrupt Middlemarch society. Yet this early contradiction then slides out of the narrative for three episodes; as if the film-makers had detected Eliot’s mechanism, but failed to understand its import. Similarly, the question of reform, which never achieves the all-pervasive impact it establishes in the novel; Mr Brooke’s powerful failure at the hustings becomes an exercise in character by the actor Robert Hardy. Story takes precedence over narration.

Of course, to the modern viewer it might all seem quaint – democracy is passé and trains are on the way out. But to do justice to the political and artistic impact of the novel, the film-makers either needed to bring these contradictions to life or to re-visualise them. Days of Hope does just this, using the parallels available to the modern viewer to develop the impact of particular points. At a discussion after a Council of Action, the middle-class lawyer/ intellectual discourses on the lessons of the failed German Revolution, as a warning to England’s revolutionaries deliberately picking up ‘Socialism in one country’. Whilst this scene is not central to the course of the strike, it is making a definite political point – one that was a direct play to the contemporary audience and debates in the early 1970s.

But the naturalism of the BBC’s Middlemarch is of a different order. it reduces the feminist critique of 1870, so that, at the end, carrying a candle up a dark staircase, Dorothea has become the wise virgin who supports Will Ladislaw. Given her liberation, and the progressive political developments within the story, the image seems romantic rather than instructive. We do actually hear the narration of George Eliot in voice-over, but there is no counter-point, as all her earlier narrative comment has been removed. I find it difficult to believe that viewers really think that the General Strike was just like Days of Hope or that women’s oppression in nineteenth century England was just like Middlemarch. But, I do think they engage with both their personal lives and their wider social ones.

Ben and Sarah are representations for a class view of one important story in our past: Dorothea is one of the more powerful representations of women’s struggles in an earlier past. Yet the most common praise heaped on the BBC adaptation of Middlemarch is for the ‘quality’ of its acting. If that is what impresses the viewer/reader most, I find it disturbing. When I first read ‘Middlemarch’, whilst I fell in love with Dorothea, my final feeling about the novel was still its powerful critique of ,women’s oppression and its intricate relationship to the political and economic complexion of the times. My regard for Sarah and Ben in Days of Hope was equally tied to sympathy for their struggle and objections to their oppressors, but was also part of a real intellectual engagement with the argument of the films (with which I do not totally agree). The 1870s novel and 1970s film are both real for me because they dramatise the history of our society; the actions of the stories show society and individuals interacting, and history acting on both. The BBC has dramatised, I fear, only romance, costumes and nostalgia. In their adaptation of the novel, history does not act, only the characters.

I expected that the new drama would suffer from similar conventionality, [I have not watched it]. The last Andrew Davies adaptation that I watched was the BBC version of Charles Dickens’ ‘Bleak House’ (2005): i gave up on it. Several commentators have suggested that if Dickens was writing today it would be for television soaps! This seems to me anachronistic. Dickens was a product of C19th Victorian Britain when he lived and worked. In ‘Bleak House’ the  central thematic is ‘muck’: Dickens responding to and criticising the ‘muck’ of the Victorian capital; the latter word in both senses. I did not really find this theme central in the several episodes of the BBC adaptation that I watched.

Notes:

The Open University material is not currently in use but was published for the now defunct OU Popular Culture Course and is partly available in ‘Popular Television and Film’, Bennett, Boyd-Bowman, Mercer & Woolacott eds.. BFI 1981. It includes a substantial part of an important article by Colin MacArthur.

Middlemarch BBC 1994 in seven episodes. Leading players: Juliet Aubrey as Dorothea Brooke: Douglas Hodge as Dr. Tertius Lydgate: Robert Hardy    as Arthur Brooke: Trevyn McDowell as Rosamond Vincy: Rufus Sewel as Will Ladislaw: Jonathan Firth as Fred Vincy: Rachel Power as Mary Garth.

Leading production people: Series Directed by Anthony Page: Series Produced by Louis Marks: Series Music by Christopher Gunning: Stanley Myers: Series Cinematography by Brian Tufano: Series Film Editing by Jerry Leon and Paul Tothill: Series Production Design by Gerry Scott: Series Art Direction by Mark Kebby: Series Costume Design by Anushia Nieradzik. The writer was Andrew Davies and he is quoted, along with production detail,  in ‘Screening Middlemarch C19th Novel to 90’s Television’, BBC and BFI.

Days of Hope (1975) is four separate films [shot on 16mm] covering the Great War and pacificism (1916: Joining Up), the British Army in Ireland and class conflict in mining communities (1921: Lockout), Labour Party ‘reformism’ and the British Communist Movement (1924: Labour Government) and 1926: General Strike. It was ( in now familiar fashion) the subject of both a Times editorial attack and a ‘balancing’ BBC discussion programme.

Leading players: Paul Copley as Ben Matthews: Pamela Brighton    Pamela Brighton as Sarah Hargreaves: Nikolas Simmonds as Philip Hargreaves.

Leading production people: Series Music by Marc Wilkinson: Series Cinematography by

John Else and Tony Pierce-Roberts: Series Film Editing by Roger Waugh: Series Production Design by Martin Johnson: Series Costume Design by Sally Nieper.

Upstairs Downstairs was a very successful videotaped drama from London Weekend Television which ran in five thirteen week series between 1971 and 1975, covering British social history from the Edwardian era until the early 1930s. The series was the subject of a long essay in ‘Movie’ No 21 Autumn 1975, in which Charles Barr, Jim Hillier and Victor Perkins compared it to the ‘quality British Cinema’ of the 1940s in terms of production techniques and audience appeal.

Colin Sparks, A Marxist Guide to Contemporary Film Theory in International Socialism 34 1987

Andrew Britton comments on ‘Middlemarch’ in ‘Metaphor and Mimesis: Madame de’ in ‘Movie’ 29/30.

The original article was in ‘in the picture’, issue 24, autumn 1994

What will be cinema? An example, ‘Patricia Highsmith’s Fiction on Film’.

Patricia Highsmith can now rest easy; it would seem that we are less and less likely to see her works as movies from now on.

This article was originally posted in 2017 on ‘The Case for Global Film’ . But now, during the lock down with cinemas closed and Festival cancelled, large numbers of cineastes rely on streaming alternatives as well as video transfers and television programming. That is fine as far as it goes. What worries me is the absence of almost any discussion of how different this is from seeing the same titles in cinemas. Much of the publicity for these screenings implies or even claims that this is an equivalent to theatrical projection. I disagree strongly with that view. This article is interesting [I hope] in that it provided detail for a number of related titles and screenings and the basis for comparisons of the different formats..

‘Adapting Highsmith’ was a programme of adaptations based on novels by Highsmith and included 13 titles. It was organised by the Filmhouse, an independent cinema in Edinburgh, with support from the British Film Institute and Waterstones book chain. The programme was circulated as a package to independent exhibitors and there were screening around the UK, including at the Leeds Hyde Park Picture House. This was a really interesting idea, well put together and supported by a package of materials provided online.

However the programme was also extremely limited in terms of what audiences were able to see as the packages relied on digital formats, and just not theatricals DCPs but also digital video. This is a problem that is now endemic in British distribution and exhibition with few venues actually offering a distinction in their publicity between actual photo-chemical film, theatrical digital and what is essentially home based digital video. My comments are less a criticism of Filmhouse itself and more a critique of common practices in British ‘film’. I would add though that initially Filmhouse provided details of the transfer when I inquired, but replies stopped when I continued seeking information. The problem continues in the streaming facilities where the producers rarely provide information on how and from what the title has been sourced.

As far as I can establish all the titles were available to screen from DCPs. However, these were sourced from a variety of materials:

    “Other films in the season are a combination of materials already in electronic form, some being standard definition and some high def.” [Information from Filmhouse Cinema]

This variation first came to my attention when I saw a circular from Filmhouse to exhibitors regarding one of the titles:

” I’m just getting in touch about the DCP of ENOUGH ROPE.

It looks very good, but it is a straight scan from a print, not a restoration. This means that the image will have some scratches and dust, especially at reel ends. The sound is a bit crackly in parts.

The main reason I’m mentioning this, is that audiences nowadays are use to digital restorations and a clean image. This is the only material available to us. I just wanted to warn you in advance in case anyone comments on this.”

I think this is not just about ‘restorations’ and in fact few of the films in the programme appeared to have been restored. Moreover, the use of the term ‘restoration’ has become quite careless. I have seen publicity for digital versions of films which use this term when in fact what has occurred is the transfer of photo-chemical prints to digital with no use of the many techniques available for restoring film. Added to this is the question of the different characteristics of photo-chemical film and digital. The ‘random silver halide grain’ in film is of a different order from the pixels in digital. The industry has been working to achieve similar characteristics on digital, hence we get the surface grain added to digital versions. But in my experience in most digital packages the contrast, definition and colour palette is at least slightly different. This is less of an issue with 4K DCPs but all these titles appear to have circulated on 2K DCPs. In fact 4K DCPS are a rarity in British distribution. In 2019 I was able to see theatrically four titles on 4K; this was far less than the number of 35mm  prints I managed that year.

Filming ‘The Price of Salt’

The most recent titles in the programme, like Carol (UK, USA, Australia 2015) presumably did not appear noticeable in this regard as they had already been transferred to digital for the initial release; and most will have had digital techniques applied during the post-production process . Even so, in the case of Carol there was also a 35mm print which I found superior in colour and contrast. For this programme only the DCP version was available. In a similar fashion The American Friend / Der Amerikanische Freund (West Germany, France 1977) was on a DCP though the BFI have a reasonable 35mm print of the film.

I did not make much of an effort to see the films that I had seen recently in a theatrical format. When it came to the older films, some of which I had never seen, I was slightly wary. Apart from the differences between digital and photo-chemical formats I have discovered that there is a serious variability between digital versions of film. I remember watching a DCP of Billy Wilder’s Some Like it Hot (USA 1959). The screen image was fuzzy and lacked good definition : the only explanation I could think of was that a video version had been uploaded onto a DCP.  I have since discovered from talking to projectionists that this indeed is quite technically easy and does indeed occur. So I now not only check the format for the screening but, as far as possible, what the source might be.

This proved to be an issue with some of the titles in the ‘Adapting Highsmith’ programme. Several of the European titles had no release dates recorded for the UK on IMDB and neither was there a record of a BBFC Certificate being issued on that website.

And there were serious problems with some of the older films which appear to have been transferred into some digital format for this programme. This meant I saw few of the titles. Fortunately my colleague Roy was exemplary in seeing them and reviewing them. And he included comments on the quality of the screenings.

Deep Water / Eaux profundes, France 1978. No UK release listed on IMDB and no BBFC record.

“The films in the season appear to be new DCPs. I found Eaux profondes to be very watchable with strong colours (Huppert wears scarlet or blindingly white outfits in several scenes). The weakest element of the presentation was the sound which seemed very loud and overly ‘bright’, lacking the subtlety of a stereo soundtrack.

The Glass Cell / Die gläserne Zelle (West Germany 1978) No record on IMDB for the UK or on BBFC.

“My second Patricia Highsmith adaptation in the touring film season was The Glass Cell at HOME in Manchester. This time it looked to be a DCP from an old video copy. The image was degraded but the subtitles were pristine digital and the sound was the same loud and ‘over bright’ mono as at the Hyde Park in Leeds in Deep Water (France 1981). The image didn’t really do justice to the work of cinematographer Robby Müller …”

Enough Rope / Le meurtrier (France, West Germany, Italy 1963).

I did go and see this film but it was not exactly as the Filmhouse note led me to expect. As Roy noted in his review:

“I understand that Keith Withall is going to write something about the overall technical aspects of the prints in this season. In this case, we had been ‘warned’ that the DCP had been created from a worn 35mm print and that we might expect scratches. These turned out to be very minor. There were two issues for me. The print was quite soft and faded – as if there was a lack of contrast in the black and white images. This meant that several interior scenes which appeared to have been lit/designed to create film noir images were instead simply grey or murky. The second issue was that the presentation was supposed to be 2.35:1 as the film was shot on ‘Franscope’. To my eye, although it looked like a ‘Scope shape, the image was squashed vertically so that the characters were slightly flattened and ‘fattened’. Gert Froebe became even more immense, but so did Maurice Ronet and Marina Vlady, the ‘glamorous couple’. I’m not sure how this could have happened and it could have been an issue about projector settings and the DCP as much as with the transfer from film. Finally, as with the two previous screenings, the mono sound seemed ‘bright’ and ‘harsh’.”

I did ask regarding this and the aspect ratio issue did not seem to be a projection problem so I assume that there was some problem with the transfer. Aspects ratios are a recurring problem in digital transfers. I frequently find that both academy ratio and the earlier 1.33:1 are cropped in digital versions. And something similar does happen with Scope images where the side edges are cropped; this occurs quite often with early CinemaScope and also with the Italian format, Techniscope.

This Sweet Sickness / Dites-lui que je l’aime (France 1977)

IMDB does not have a UK release listed for this film though it did receive an X Certificate from the BBFC in 1979. This would have been on 35mm film but it seems that no copy is now held in the UK. So it seems likely that some other source was used. Roy noted in his review:

“I must note (for Keith’s benefit) that the film was projected as 1.66:1, the standard European format for the period and that the digital copy we saw seemed to have been copied from a video source which hadn’t been properly ‘de-interlaced’ so that the image ‘feathered’ every now and again.”

Roy added that in these cases he was able to watch the film and basically overlook the flaws. This was mainly true for myself with Le meurtrier. But I also think that this affected my overall impression of the film. I certainly think that the craft people who worked on these films deserve to have their handiwork seen in the manner and format intended.  Of course, this is not a new problem with the advent of digital. In the days when 35mm was the norm there were frequent variations in the quality of the image and sound that audiences experienced in cinemas. Once video arrived the possibilities expanded. I remember in the 1980s going to see Mandingo (USA 1975) at a multi-screen. The quality was extremely poor and I discovered after the  screening that the source was a VHS video back-projected. Since then it has become  technically easier with digital.

There is an example of providing older films on digital where the standards offered were higher. This was ‘Martin Scorsese Presents: Masterpieces of Polish Cinema’, launched in 2014. Some of the titles were on film but the majority were on DCPs. I saw quite a number of these and the standard was uniformly high. Of course Scorsese is an important figure in restoring and circulating classic films. Moreover he had the assistance of The Film Foundation and Polish Film and Cultural Institutes. But how come this package was clearly superior to one involving the British film Institute? More recently the Hungarian Film Archive restored digitally a number of titles by Marta Meszaros. I saw a screening of her first feature, Adoption /  Örökbefogadás (1975) at the 2019 Berlinale. It was a 4K DCP and the quality was excellent.

A related example is by the Cinémathèque Française. A friend told me that they had declined to license a proposed public screening of one of their titles as the screening was being sourced from a  digital video. An example other archives should follow.

Apart from any objections to the loss of quality there are other reasons to question this practice. The specifications for DCP agreed internationally lay down quality criteria. But sourcing from video, analogue or digital, subverts these standards. Also it is likely to have a long-term detrimental effect on the exhibition sector. I have several friends now who for much of the time opt for home video viewing over visiting the cinema. One of these has a high-quality projector and Blu-Ray player: he claims there is not a lot of difference between that and seeing the film at the cinema. In the case of films sourced from video this is clearly correct. And the complication here is that the offenders are by and large distribution companies whose incomes include non-theatrical sales and rentals and who therefore are to a degree immune from the effects in the exhibition sector.

But exhibitors aggravate the problem by their failure to adequately inform the public. Two of the cinemas I visit regularly do include information about titles that are on digital or film and/or whether the DCP is 2K or 4K. But nether provides information on the use of other formats like DVD or Blu-Ray. And most exhibitors do not provide even this information. I know of several Film Festivals that do provide detailed information about formats, [one being The Leeds International Film Festival but no longer in 2019]: but there are many Festivals that do not. I think I am a little of a pain for some of these with my constant inquiries regarding the format for a particular screening.

This ambiguous treatment of film and digital formats is further complicated by ambiguous use of terms like ‘cinema’. It use to be that the alternative to the cinema was a film society, usually offering 16mm. Now many of these use digital video and quite a lot use the title of ‘pop-up cinema’. There is something of this ilk near where I live. It uses a non-theatrical Projector and either DVD or Blu-Ray sources: and publicizes itself as a ‘cinema’. I expect cinemas to follow theatrical standards but that often seems a vain hope.

There are many Web Pages regarding the comparison between 35mm film, D-Cinema and digital video. There does not seem to be a consensus but the archivists I have spoken too tend to think that good quality 35mm film has a higher resolution than 4K DCPs. There is less consensus regarding contrast but chromaticity diagrams show differences across the colour palette. One colleague argues the equivalence would be at about 7K. 35mm film prints varies due to lighting, movement, stock, and the transfer but I think there is no doubt that none of the digital video formats are in any way equivalent.

Currently many of the alternatives to the closed cinemas and cancelled festivals are streaming titles. And this seems as problematic as video. Amazon Prime’s standard is below Blu-Ray and Netflix’s standard is below Prime. Whilst You Tube standards depend on whoever if posting on the platform; some is viewable, some is not. A friend reckoned that the streaming platform MUBI was better quality. And industry professionals are already voicing concern about what the situation will be like after the lock down. Transitions in technology in the industry to tend to be both disruptive and subversive of quality. This was definitely the case with the advent of sound and this had parallels when wide screen cinema arrived. Several writers have used the phrase ‘the death of cinema’. This seems an unlikely extreme but I do wonder if quality will re-assert as was the case after the disruptions of sound and wide screen. The caution by Filmhouse that audiences would expect the ‘clean image’ of digital when viewing films from many decades earlier does worry me. And anecdotal evidence from comments after screenings suggest that this is true for possibly a sizeable part of the modern audience. Matters are not helped by the British flagship magazine Sight & Sound; their latest issues starts with Netflix titles and then runs Television reviews alongside those for theatrical screenings.

The essential reading is ‘FIAF Digital Projection Guide‘ by Torkell Sætervadet, 2012 – International Federation of Film Archive.

‘An American Tragedy’ by Mandy Merck

A book about an early 20th century novel, which judging by the library copy I borrowed is now little read, and two adaptations made in Hollywood more than fifty years ago sounds a little esoteric. But in its day the book was a best seller and very influential. Many critics and commentators also saw it as a compelling commentary on US society. Theodore Dreiser used a real-life murder as the basis for his plot of a young man who loves both a working girl and a rich socialite. Faced by the former’s pregnancy, he first tries abortion then killing. Dreiser maintained “it could not happen in any other country in the world”. Mandy Merck comments “the novel and its adaptations both constitute and are constituted by the convulsions of the nation state that is its protagonist and its theme”. The book is concerned with the sociology of the protagonist’s fate, not the drama.

Merck discusses in detail the origins of Dreiser’s novel, (written whilst he worked as a writer in Hollywood), and three film versions: one by Sergei Eisenstein, unrealised: one by Josef Von Sternberg for Paramount in 1931: and the most famous, directed by George Stevens for Paramount in 1951. This was A Place in the Sun starring Montgomery Cliff and Elisabeth Taylor. Merck points out in her introduction that she studies the authors, who include Dreiser, the directors who worked on the adaptations, and the economic authors, the Hollywood studios. She does this in an exemplary fashion, having clearly engaged in very detailed research.

We read about the development of Dreiser’s mammoth novel, running to 800 pages. Dreiser was an important contributor to a movement for realist fiction. He himself had researched the real-life love and affairs and subsequent murders that are the prime focus. He always carefully researched the places and people who fill his novels. H. L. Mencken commented, “When he sent some character into an eating-house for a meal it was always some eating-house that he had been to himself, and the meal he described in such relentless detail was one he had eaten, digested and remembered.” (Introduction to the 1948 edition). Another writer quoted in this volume opined, “No one else confronted so directly the sheer intractability of American social life and institutions, or … the difficulty of breaking free from social law.” (D. Denby in 2003).

Dreiser was an important writer and literary influence; one could describe ;’An American Tragedy’ as an example of the ‘great American [I.e. USA] novel’; a work that can be read as a ‘state of the nation’ drama. His other major novel was ‘Sister Carrie’ (1900), filmed in 1952 as Carrie starring Jennifer Jones and Laurence Olivier. Dreiser started out as a journalist and also wrote short stories and non-fiction. He supported the socialist movement in the USA and was prominent in defending people under assault by the US state.

The length and complexity of this novel made for a daunting adaptation. It was one of the projects worked on by Sergei Eisenstein when he sojourned briefly in Hollywood in 1929. Dreiser’s depiction of class divisions and his sociological standpoint clearly appealed to Eisenstein. He worked up a script for a 14-reel version. Merck studies this in detail, and it promised to be an intelligent and cinematic version of the novel. Dreiser certainly gave his approval. However, it did not get past the studio bosses, presumably made nervous by its morals and by the contemporary red-baiting would-be censors. The author’s discussion is interesting in terms of Eisenstein’s career, though I always wonder how either Eisenstein or his companions seriously imagined they could make a film in Hollywood.

The Sternberg version seems mainly to have been an attempt to recoup some of the costs by the studio. Sternberg was interested in illusion and artifice rather than realism. A quote by Selznick runs, “I don’t think he has the basic honesty, the tolerance, the understanding this subject absolutely requires, . . .” Moreover, the imminent arrival of Hollywood system of censorship, the Hays Code, made the explicit subject of the novel difficult. On completion, Dreiser was appalled at what his original had become, and undertook legal action, but he lost.

The post-war version that was very much Stevens’ own project. But Ivan Moffat complained, “Stevens was a romantic, so the bleak social picture painted by Dreiser took second place to the steamy love-affair between George and Angela” (the protagonist and his privileged amour). Certainly the film’s centre was the on- (and off-) screen romance: which I vividly remember from my younger film-going days.

All four versions of the story suffered from censorship and social outrage, since the original plot contained seduction, attempted abortion, murder and official corruption. Some of those involved in the 1950s version were also caught up in the Bacchus attack on the Industry’s ‘liberals’. Merck spends time on these various social angles and their impact on the succeeding projects, and the overall discourse of book and films.

The book develops into a compelling and informative study of Hollywood and its relationship to US society and the wider world. At the end of the book Merck notes that 2005 saw a version of the original novel at New York’s Metropolitan Opera House: and a faintly disguised borrowing in Woody Allen’s Match Point (2005); a disappointing title from Woody Allen. Even Jean-Luc Godard joined the act with a brief reference in Histoire(s) du cinéma (1989).

I certainly recommend Mandy Merck’s authoritative study. I also recommend Dreiser’s original ‘An American Tragedy’. The 800 pages do not seem so many when you get involved in the novel. Coincidentally, I have also recently re-read novels by Dreiser’s fellow realist, Upton Sinclair. And another doyen of North American realism is Frank Norris. Hollywood famously filmed his McTeague as Greed (1923), with equally problematic results. The director was Erich Von Stroheim, who, along with Eisenstein, was one of the filmmakers preferred by Dreiser for his own epic work. Merck;s book demonstrates how richly engaging with the original authors illuminates the films.

Hollywood’s American Tragedies: Dreiser, Eisenstein, Sternberg, Stevens

Mandy Merck, Berg 2007.

ISBN 978 1 84520 665 9 Paperback, 171 pages.

Originally a review for ‘The Case for Global Film’.

Red Joan, Britain 2018

This is the story of a fictional character, Joan Stanley, who in the 1940s passed secret information to the Soviet Union. However, it, and the novel from which it is adapted, are based on the life of a actual historical character, Melita Norwood. Norwood was exposed publicly in 1999 when information from an ex-Soviet agent and now-defector revealed her past activities. These two fictional versions of a real-life heroine appears to have caused some confusion. The plot synopsis on IMDB relates to the real-life Norwood and not to the character in the film.
The film version presents the story in a fairly conventional-style narrative. The film opens with the arrest of Joan (Judi Dench) by Special Branch in 1999. Then we view a series of interrogations which are intercut with flashbacks by Joan to the 1930s and 1940s. The interrogations fill out the action in 1999 where information has led to the exposure of a senior Foreign Office official as well as Joan. The flashbacks presents Joan’s personal life and then her spy activities. At Cambridge ‘Young Joan’ (Sophie Cookson) meets glamorous European emigre Sonya Galich (Teresa Srbova) and cousin Leo Galich (Tom Hughes). Both are communist activists. They are also ex-lovers, something only revealed late in the flashbacks. Joan becomes involved with Leo. Come the 1940s Joan is recruited to the secret ‘Tube Alloys Project’ which is actually part of the war-time nuclear research. She is personal secretary to project leader Max Davis (Stephen Campbell Moor) and is privy to all of the secret papers to and from the project. Leo and Sonia both urge Joan to pass on secret information for Russia, as the war-time ally is excluded from the circulation of such research. The film hardly at all uses the correct definition of the Soviet Union. Joan resists, she is prejudiced against Russia. At a screening of The Battleship Potemkin she is clearly bored by the film .
Then the USA and Britain use the new nuclear device on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Joan is appalled and now starts to pass on secret information via Sonia to Soviet agents. Her justification is that the Soviet Union needs equal access to this new weapon. As the flashbacks develop Leo is killed, possibly by the NKVD; and Sonia flees to Europe. Joan begins an affair with Max. When the leaks become apparent Max is suspected of the espionage and arrested. Joan blackmails a fellow communist sympathiser and secret homosexual, William Mitchell (Freddie Gaminara), now based in the Foreign Office, to obtain Max’s release and new passports so the couple can emigrate to Australia. As they board the boat Joan confesses to Max that she was the spy.
In the present it appears that at some point Joan has returned to Britain, possibly after the death of her husband Max. Her son Nick (Ben Miles) is now a lawyer. He is appalled when he learn of his mother’s ‘treachery’. The film ends as Joan is arrested after the release of the story. At her front door she faces the press and declares that she did indeed pass secret information to the Russians. She justifies this by saying that equal access by the Allies and Russia prevented a nuclear war. Nick, now reconciled, joins her.
The film apparently follows the book fairly closely. The author, Jennie Rooney, studied at Cambridge University. Here she encountered the story of Melita Norwood. Her narrative is heavily fictionalised and one senses it is strongly influenced by the history and myths around the Cambridge spies. Some of the characters in the film seems thinly disguised versions of characters well-known in that history. This seems to have carried over into the film. And the politics of the latter are far removed from those of the actual Melita Norwood. Peter Bradshaw, in The Guardian, commented;
“The film gives its ‘Red Joan’ a conventionally glamorous Apostle-style career in Cambridge University that Norwood didn’t have, along with a less ideological, more-mainstream approach to cold war politics.”
I was trying to work out in what sense he was using ideological? Perhaps that there is not much political dialogue or discussion. The flashbacks focus on the romances between Joan and Leo, and then between Joan and Max. Stalin gets a mention several times, I think being labelled a ‘mass murderer’ at least twice. Leo talks about the Communist International but I do not recollect many members of the Communist Party of Great Britain. William Mitchell was member but lets it drop as he becomes involved in espionage. Hitler gets a few mentions but not Trotsky. The British imperial values are present. It is clear that the ‘Tube Alloy Project’ is about an independent nuclear weapon. In one scene Max stresses the importance of the British research and autonomy whilst the listening Atlee comments approvingly. This probably relates to the strand of values embraced by Joan; equal access for Russia.

The history of Melita Norwood is strikingly different. No Cambridge career. A member of the British Communist Party along with her husband. She actually worked as a secretary at the British Non-Ferrous Metals Research Association and the secrets she found passed through her office. A convinced communist, she apparently gained no material profit from her actions. When asked about her motives, she said:
“I did what I did, not to make money, but to help prevent the defeat of a new system which had, at great cost, given ordinary people food and fares which they could afford, a good education and a health service.” (Wikipedia – BBC interview in 1999).
Given the conformist politics in Britain that was thought to radical for audiences. The title is certainly mainstream in that sense. It is also mainstream and conventional in its form and style. The director, Trevor Nunn, found the story in the novel. But as well as seemingly following the book closely it relies on fairly standard tropes. Judi Dench, as one would expect, is excellent as the older Joan. The rest of the cast are good and the flashbacks work as drama. Visually and aurally the film has good techniques but does not generate great emotion or involvement. The plot is obviously geared towards the development and resolution of the narrative. Max and Joan’s escape seems fatuous even given the failings of British security later. Nick’s final support of his mother lacks conviction and motivation.
It is good to see the story told on film. The period detail is pretty good so it is fascinating [as always] to revisit this important period. But it does little serve to the heroine who inspired the story. Melita may have harboured illusions about the Soviet Union that many other had already overcome. But the still lasting effects of socialist construction meant that in many ways it still pipped an advanced capitalist and colonialist state like Britain. Melita Norwood saw herself as supporting the International Working Class and its own workers’ state. By contrast ‘Red Joan’ comes across as rather liberal and lacking in developed cinematic tastes.

The Happy Prince, Germany, Belgium, Britain 2018

This is the new film about Oscar Wilde, titled from his famous short story. Oscar Wilde’s rise and fall is one of the most well-known and dramatic careers in C19th Britain. A popular writer and journalist, a successful playwright, raconteur and epigrammatist, the revelation of his homosexuality, the repressed and noir looking underground of Victorian society, led to disaster and early death. There have been numerous books about Wilde, and quite a few theatrical plays and television features and programmes. And there have been four English language features films, and French and German features, plus several documentarians. And his plays and his one novel, ‘The Picture of Dorian Grey’, have a number of film adaptations.

There is much material for the films. Apart from biographies and treatments in other media, memoirs of Wilde abound. There is his own ‘De Profundis’, though this and the recollections of people who knew him are not always reliable. And the famous trials were recorded in detail and all these film versions utilise the more notable contributions by Wilde. ‘The love that dare not speak its name’ [from an essay] has become a well used phrase in English.

Oscar Wilde (1960) was produced by Vantage Films and distributed by C20th Fox. It garnered an ‘X’ certificate from the British Board of Film Censors, a classification that seems bizarre fifty years on. It was shot in black and white and in the Academy ratio, quite a late example of the use of this ratio. The director was Gregory Ratoff, a Russian émigré who moved first to Paris and then Hollywood. The script was by Jo Eisinger and based on a play that included reminiscences by Wilde’s friend Frank Harris. Eisinger had earlier scripted the notable 1950 Night and the City.

The key members of the cast were Robert Morley as Oscar Wilde; Phyllis Calvert as his wife Constance; and John Neville as Lord Alfred Douglas,[Bosie], Wilde’s lover and the cause of his downfall. Morley is fine presenting Wilde as society wit and epigrammatist; the sexual side is much weaker. But the film itself is weak on this; apparently a scene involving Wilde soliciting a ‘rent boy’ was cut. Neville as Lord Alfred Douglas (Bosie) does not generate enough charm to justify the obsession that Wilde developed for him. Calvert’s Constance is under-written and her casting presumably followed from earlier roles where she was a put-upon wife, such as They Were Sisters (1945).

The film opens and closes ion Wilde’s grave in Paris at the Père Lachaise Cemetery. It then revisits Wilde’s infatuation and introduces his nemesis, Bosie ‘s father, The Marquis of Queensbury [spellings vary], played by Edmunds Chapman who never exhibits the manic qualities ascribed to the character. What stands out is the trial and the now famous cross-examination by Sir Edward Carson (Ralph Richardson). Richardson plays the character as steely and pitiless. The film also uses the trial transcripts and offers the fullest dramatisation of the court hearing. Following the trial we briefly see Wilde’s incarceration and then his decline in Paris.

The Monthly Film Bulletin (July 1960]] notes the circumstances of the film’s release.

“The film, by five days, of two neck and neck versions of the Wilde story to reach the screen, Oscar Wilde was still being edited up to a couple of hours before the press show. “

This partly accounts for the lack of life in the film and in the portrayals. Possibly responding to Richardson’s careful demolition Morley does give eloquence to the passage of the ‘Love that dare not speak its name’.

The competing version was The Trials of Oscar Wilde, with executive producers Irving Allan and Albert R. Broccoli. This film also received an ‘X’ certificate, with slightly more justification. The film was both scripted and directed by Ken Hughes,; he went on to direct the fine film version of Oliver Cromwell (1970). The film was based on a novel of the same name by Montgomery Hyde and a theatrical adaptation by John Furnell, ‘The Stringed Lute’. The film was shot in Technirama 70, with fine Technicolor and a ratio of 2.20:1 in the 70mm prints, [2.35:1 in the 35mm prints]. The film had a talented production crew, Ted Moore providing the cinematography : he worked on several Bond films. As also did the designer [along with Bill Constable] Ken Adams. And Ron Goodwin provided the music. The film looks and sounds much better than its rival.

The plot begins at the same point as Oscar Wilde, the opening of ‘Lady Windermere’s Fan’. However the film fills in the preceding relationship between Wilde and ‘Bosie’. In fact the film portrays this relationship in much greater depth. One gets a sense of the involvement between the two men and their other relationships, wife and father. John Fraser is good as lord Douglas whilst Lionel Jefferies is excellent as the mad, manic and macho Marquis of Queensbury. Yvonne Mitchell plays Wilde’s wife Constance but the part is again underwritten. We meet their children briefly and at one point hear Oscar telling ‘The Happy Prince’ [incomplete]. At the centre of the film is Peter Finch’s portrayal of Wilde. He does not really catch the writer or the notorious public figure but invests great skill in his obsession with ‘Bosie’ and in the way his life collapses.

Given the title of the film the treatment of the criminal libel case is underdeveloped; ‘trials’ in the sense of the personal. James Mason is not as ruthless as the Richardson portrayal. The film does deal with the two subsequent prosecutions, one ending in a dead-locked jury the other in Wilde’s draconian and moralistic punishment. The film ends with Wilde’s release and does not follow him in his exile in Paris. The last shot is as he leaves London by train. This common trope offers the sight of Wilde spurning ‘Bosie’ as his train departs.

This is a pretty good portrait of Wilde but its primary concern is the in famous relationship and his personal suffering. London and theatre-land of the period is well drawn but seems slightly external to the characters. The powerful scenes are those where Wilde’s obsession increases at the same time as Bosie’s demands increasingly sap his artistry and his social position.

Thirty seven years on and with social attitudes to sexual orientation much changed came Wilde (1997). This biopic was produced in a period when films openly and explicitly addressing gay love were frequent. The film was credited as British and to three other territories; there are a number of production companies, including monies from British and European state agencies. The screenplay is by Julian Mitchell from the book ‘Oscar Wilde’ by Richard Ellmann. It is filmed in anamorphic 2.35:1 and in full Metrocolor. Martin Fuhrer cinematography makes good use of the production design by Maria Djurkovic and very fine costumes by Nic Ede. Oscar Wilde is played in the film by Christopher Fry whose personal and sexual orientation are closer to the subject than that of the earlier actors. He does capture the flamboyance of Wilde’s public image and [to a degree] the contradictory nature of his desires and attractions. The film sets this up in an inspired opening sequence. Prior to marriage the young Wilde, already a noted social figure, visits and entertains miners as he makes a trip to the USA and ‘out west’. This nicely sets up the public figure of Wilde and his ambiguous standing.

The film gives us Wilde’s married life and his two children. Jennifer Ehle has a better written part than her predecessors and offers more rounded portrait of the character. Michael Sheen plays Robert Ross, who both introduces Wilde to the pleasures of homosexuality and also remains a steadfast friend through the travails that will follow. But the film’s prime interest is in Wilde’s sexuality and his obsession with Lord Alfred Douglas, (Jude Law). Their sequences are the most extended in the film and the two actors give full rein to the obsession on one side and the self-centred conduct on the other. Some of the scenes, like Wilde’s sojourn in Brighton whilst ill, cross over with the earlier Trials. But this representation is more powerful and complex, thanks in part to the greater latitude allowed the subject in this period. Tom Wilkinson, as the Marquess of Queensbury, is good and allowed a more complex characterisation than the earlier films.

The film was classified ’15’, how times changed. And it contains a certain amount of explicit sexual conduct. However, I do not think there is any frontal nudity, and the film successfully avoided the ’18’ classification in Britain. The film does show us both Wilde and Bosie’s sexual relationship and their indulgence in what then [as more recently] were described as ‘rent boys’. But that focus takes the film away from the most famous aspect of the story, the notorious trials. The treatment of the libel case is fairly perfunctory in relation to the earlier versions. And the two cases of prosecution are past over.

There are some grim sequences of Wilde’s prison term. And we follow him to exile in France. However, the film ends when he and Bosie re-unite, [though in actuality this was a brief reunion].

The film, as in earlier versions, uses much of the recorded dialogue. Some of the stormier scenes are taken from the account Wilde himself gave in ‘De Profundis’. And there are a number of scenes where we hear Wilde’s famous short story, ‘The Selfish Giant’; suggesting a critical line in the narrative,.

Now, twenty years later, we have a new version of Oscar Wilde. ‘A passion project’ for writer and director Rupert Everett. Apparently it took Everett five years to bring the project to completion. It is credited to Belgium, Italy and Britain; the list of Production Companies runs to two columns in S&S, the main sources being the BBC, Tele München and Télevision belge. The film was shot digitally and in colour and 2.35:1. The main location for the project was Bavaria, with other sites in Belgium, France and Italy. The cinematography by John Conroy looks good as does the production design by Brian Morris. Both interiors and exteriors are convincing and full of interest. The locations partly reflect the film’s focus, the last years of Wilde’s life following his imprisonment and exile. The title of the film is taken from the famous short story by Oscar Wilde, which also figured briefly in the earlier Trials. But here the story becomes a metaphor for the downward spiral of Wilde’s life. The last line of that story suggests the posthumous upward spiral of his work and reputation.

The film opens in 1900 with Wilde already in exile. His life there is intercut with flashbacks to the earlier parts of the story. In a couple of places we get a montage of clips summoning up the past but also highlighting the parallels and oppositions in his career. In an early sequence he entertains a crowd in a low Paris bar with a rendition of a music hall favourite, he collapses and this is followed by a montage of clips including his sentencing for ‘immorality’, the vindictive Marquess of Queensbury and the deeply depressing Reading Gaol. In another sequence, that also appeared in Wilde, we see Oscar pursued by homophobic young Englishness in a Normandy town. There follows a montage of clips that present the opposition and parallels in Wilde life, including a grim sequence as he was baited on his way to prison counterposed with his triumph at the opening night of ‘Lady Windermere’s Fan’. Right through the film Everett and his team counterpose the life in exile with memories and returns to both Wilde success and fame and his degradation after his fall. Nicolas Gaster editing is to be commended.

Everett’s Wilde dominates the film. Philip Kemp notes that

“Rupert Everett, in his magisterial role as writer, director and star, catches the theatricality self-mocking aspect of the flamboyant littérateur almost from the start.” (Sight & Sound July 2018).

Everett also catches the rumbustious vitality which enabled Wilde to entertain people across the Victorian divide, from bourgeois to proletarians. This also brings out his sympathy, [though not very analytical] for the exploited and oppressed.

Everett dominates the screen so that other characters are not that fully developed. Both Edwin Thomas) Robbie Ross) and Colin Morgan (Lord Alfred Douglas are excellent as Oscar’s lovers. Emily Watson is fine but gets only limited screen time. The rest of the cast are those who Wilde encounters in exile with a key British character, like the Marquess of Queensbury’ seen only briefly and not credited.

The film offers a valedictory portrait of the artist, with all his flaws and vices. It also give insight into this destructive urges which explain how his great success was followed by such a precipitous fall. And it addresses directly and fully his homosexual activities. The BBFC gave the film a ’15’ certificate noting that

“very strong language, strong nudity, drug misuse”.

We see Oscar recounting ‘The Happy Prince’ to two young French urchins, one of who he pays for sex. And in another fine transition we cut to the earlier Wilde recounting that story to his two sons. I think this story makes a better metaphor for Wilde himself that that of ‘The Selfish Giant’ used in Wilde. Everett subtly changes some of the tale to suit the film. Thus the ‘young man in as garret’ becomes

“a broken man … He was a writer, but he was too cold to finish his play”.

Here the sentimentality in some of Wilde’s work, though not his famous plays, comes to the fore. And the part of the story [featured elsewhere in the film] where the Mayor decrees the fate of the statue of the ‘Happy Prince,’ cast aside and melted down, draws Wilde’s moral with emphasis to his own fate at the hands of the moralistic Victorian society.

The film has its flaws and the occasional longueur. But Everett’s characterisation, the vivid portrayal of Wilde’s treatment, and the moral valuation offered by the film, make this my favourite of the film adaptations. Given Wilde’s place in the Pantheon, the richness of his artistic work, and the key place he occupies in the history of ‘coming out’, I am sure that we will see more films on this subject in the future.

Further thoughts on Our Little Sister / Umimachi Diary Japan 2015

I discussed this film with a student group in Talking Pictures. The response was positive. And the discussion raised some further aspects of the film which I find interesting. One student, familiar with Japan and Japanese culture made a comment about the title:

Umimachi Diary (Japanese: 海街diary?, lit. “Seaside Town Diary”) is a Japanese ‘josei manga’ [comic book] by Akimi Yoshida serialized in Monthly Flowers magazine.

It seems that in the original comic book, whilst the sisters are the key characters there is more about the town itself. Kamakura is a small coastal town about fifty kilometres south west of Tokyo. In the film [and I believe the comic] the film opens with the three sisters [Sachi, aged 29, Yoshino aged 22, and Chika, aged 19) travelling to Yamagata in the north of Japan for the funeral of their father, who deserted them and their mother 15 years or more ago for another women. At the funeral they meet the fourth sister, Suzu [aged 13]. She was bought up in Sendai, not that far from Yamagata.

For the western viewer the topography is not spelt out but presumably it is quite clear to a Japanese audience. Travelling north suggests moving from the relatively warn coastal region to the north, which suffers more severe winters and is prey to much stormier conditions; it is in the north that the 2011 Tsunami wreaked havoc. The difference between the key towns in the story would appear to mirror differences among the characters. Whilst the sisters have their failings and foibles they generally adhere to a set of values around family and personal responsibilities. But characters away from Kamakura, like the father and their absent mother, seem much less faithful to these values.

The film appears to follow a set of seasons over a year. It could be longer. In the manga source Suzu is thirteen when she meets her older sisters. In the film, but the concluding summer of the story, she is given as fifteen. The film is ambiguous about time, as we move from setting to setting, defined more by the season than the calendar. The film is [more or less] bookended by funerals; at the opening that of the absent father which brings the four sisters together; at the end it is the funeral of Ms Nimoniya (Fabuki Jun), whose seaside café is an important and recurring setting in the film.

The film uses a number of recurring tropes and motifs, which fill out relationships and comment on the characters. One particular trope that struck me was people going up and down hill: steps, stairways and paths through woods or up hills. This trope occurs in most of Koreeda’s films. These walks seem to mirror the up and down rhythms of the lives of characters. There is one splendid sequence when Suzu is given a bicycle spin by a fellow students and they glide downhill under an overarching cover of cherry blossom; and cherry blossom is a motif that crops up a couple of times in characters dialogue and memories.

Memory is central to Koreeda’s family dramas, indeed to all of his films that I have seen. Memories can fill out the resonance of lives and relationships. This is represented most frequently in the film by the plum wine. At a key moment of reconciliation Sachi, who has argued painfully with her mother on a brief return visit, caries the last jar of the grandmother’s vintage plum wine as a parting gift.  Other memories are more problematic and characters are inhibited about these. An example is whitebait, which Suzu experiences as a treat of Ms Nimoniya’s café. However, she cannot admit that it is a dish that she shared with her father in times past.

Food is notable in this film. And it seems to me that it is a much more notable presence in South East Asian films, especially those from Japan. Ritual like food preparation and enjoyment provide moments when characters can group together. And the shared pleasures bring out a warmth in relationships. In some films meal times are moment of crisis, but not in Our Little Sister. Moreover, they are also associated with memories. Not only in the case of Suzu and whitebait but with Yoshino and fried mackerel.

The sisters house is the central set of the story. Old and lacking full up-to-date amenities, it represents a feel for past. It does enjoy a splendid garden, with the luxuriant plum tree near the house. Within it are the personal spaces, represented by the sisters’ rooms. But there are the shared spaces like the bathroom, seen briefly, but a site of a tussle between Yoshino and Sachi. And there are the communal spaces, notably the kitchen and the lounge which is where meals are taken.

We see Sachi at her work at a local hospital, where she is also involved with a doctor, married but whose wife’s mental problem mean she is housed in an institution. We see Yoshino working at the bank, and indeed one of the feckless young men who she dates, usually disastrously. We also see her on visits as a financial advisor, including to Ms Nominiya’s café, where the latter’s ill health is exacerbated by financial problems. And we see Chika at the sport shop, where she works with her  boyfriend. They regularly support the school football team, in which Suzu becomes a star player. And we see Suzu at school with her follow students and friends.

Late in the film, in late summer we watch an annual town firework display; held over the waters alongside the small port. There is a beautifully spectacular long shot of Suzu and her friends in a small boat watching the firework display; with its coloured reflection in the evening waters. And there is a smaller celebration with sparklers in the garden.

This is one of many sequences in the film that strike the viewer with their beauty. But they also offer occasions where we see the sisters in the wider communities of the town. In this film, whilst there are traumas and conflicts within family groups, the sense of relationships is generally positive: something not found in all of Koreeda’s dramas. The film is a pleasure to watch and to listen to. It generally moves at a slow and undramatic pace and this is part of its pleasure. And it offers a portrait of family life that stands out both in  Japanese film and World Cinema.