Night Mail 1936 - Art and covert socialism

Available now on BFI player, Night Mail, the pioneering documentary produced by the General Post Office film unit released in February 1936.  It's fairly unique, a factual documentary about train services,but it's lifted out of this into the realm of art, by its sensitivity to the subject. Real railwaymen and postal workers, not actors : nothing faked. It's an idea that connects back to the futurism of the 1920's and 1930's and even further back to to William Morris's concepts ideas of art and socialism as continuum.  Mail sorters are seen putting letters into pigeonholes : repetitive rythmic movements which streamline the process, their movements almost balletic.  Then, look at the trains themselves - engines puffing, pistons moving, travelling in orderly, organized lines across the country.  Much more than mundane mechanical process ! Even the sound of steam rushing through the chimneys and the banter of the workers sound like music. The Postal Special is so efficient that letters and parcels posted in one area can be sorted and bagged on the train within half an hour.  On this orderly efficiency, rests the prosperity of industrial Britain.  Night Mail was created to boost the morale of low paid workers, but also as public relations. On this orderly efficiency rests the prosperity of industrial Britain.

Night Mail is "industrial poetry" so it's perfectly apt that it should end with poetry and music.  W H Auden's poem captures the rhythms of  machines and men, working in unison, while opening out to the world beyond - letters of every kind, from all over the world, communicating human stories of every kind.  Th very young Benjamin Britten picked up on this context, his music replicating the lines of the text to brilliant effect.  Produced and directed by Harry Watt and  Basil Wright,  this film is also influenced by Alberto Cavalcanti who had made Rien que les heures (Nothing but time) - a day in the life of Paris, from 1926,  not unlike WaltervRuttman's Berlin : Symphony of a Great City (read more here). Very much in the spirit of futurism and creative modernity.  Sadly, some things don't change. Cavalcanti was poised to head the GPO film but was cut off as he wasn't British. He returned to his native Brazil, then returned to Europe, East Berlin and France.

Prophetic Nemesis : Hitchcock the Birds

In times of COVID pandemic, it's scarier than ever to watch Alfred Hirtchcock's The Birds, released in 1963.  Since I used to live round there, the dichotomy between art and reality had an even greater impact than an ordinary movie.  We knew that gas station when it was still  hand pumped, and the pier when it was still worked by fishermen, bringing in their catch. We used to drive past the schoolhouse, up a narrow lane.  One year the rose covered cottage where Annie the schoolteacher supposedly lived, but didn't join the crowds of tourists who went to view. Some scenes filmed on location, others copied in studio, but absolutely convincing. So scenes such as Melanie sitting "driving" a car against a badly cut filmed background of birds  might have been deliberatly unsettling - what is real, what is not ?

Hitchcocks The Birds works on many levels. Melanie Daniels (Tippi Hendren) is a rich bitch whose life is aimless so she does silly stunts like dancing naked in a public fountain and smashing. Daddy's a millionaire newspaper owner., so she gets away with anything, including getting reporters to track people down by their car licence plates - illegal then, as now.  While she's in a bird shop, a lovebbird escapes and goes berserk flying round the room.  What does it know ? Mitch Brenner (Rod Taylor) gently catches it and puts it back in its cage. Melanie becomes obssessed with Mitch and figures out a way to stalk him, even if it means sailing a boat across Bodega Bay to his home.  She brings him a pair of lovebirds, but lies non stop about her motives. Yet he lets her into his life.  Annie, (Susanne Pleshette) knows something's wrong with Melanie but she loves Mitch so much she's willing to play second fiddle rather than lose him.. Mitch's mother Lydia (Jessica Tandy) also has psychiatric issues so perhaps Mitch, Annie and his family are in cages of their own.  Melanie blames hrer problrems on her mother who walked out on her but doesn't wonder why her mother needed to do that in the first place.  Though the mayhem doesn't start til the birds go mad, the people here are already waiting to explode.

Birds attack the children playing at Cathy (Mitch's sisters)'s birthday party, burst in the balloons. Seagulls come down the chimney and attack Mitch's family as they sit after dinner - rural bliss destroyed by something alien.  On the farm next door,  the chickens haven't been feeding, something's amiss.  Next moring, the farmer is found dead, his eyes picked out by birds. This is no silly prank. Chickens, who don't fly, avenged by crows. Then the famous schoolyard scene. While the kids sing in the classroom, Melanie waits outside, smoking a  cigarette.  A crow appears on the climbing frame, then another, and another...... Calmly tells the kids to move as quietly as possible  but the birds descend on them as they walk to the cars.  Melanie goes to the local gas station to phone her Dad. No phones at home, then !  And goods delivered by horse and cart.  The crows attack. Gasoline spills and ignites into a fireball. Melanie hides in a phone booth ( a glass cage). She and Mitch go fetch Cathy, who is at Annie's but Annie is dead. She died, pushing Cathy into the house before she was pecked to death on the doorstep.

The family hides out at their farm, which is boarded up in vain defence. But the birds get in, through the attic and attack Melanie. They don't really know what's happening outside Bodega Bay except that most locals have evacuated, they're alone and attacks have occured in Santa Rosa (nearest major hospital) so they start to drive to San Fransisco.  But as they're fleeing, the car is besieged. What happens ? Hitchcock's The Birds is a masterpiece. Nature can turn the tables without notice.  The trappings of civilisation collapse quickly when people think they know better than Nature

Richard Tauber stars with Jimmy Durante - Forbidden Music !

Not an April Fool !  Richard Tauber statrs with Jimmy Durante in Land without Music aka Forbidden Music.  In a tiny principality somewhere in Mittel-Europa, the peasants make music all te time. The cattle in the field plough their furroughs unatteneded, whike the peasants make music - a farmer playing a (concert bassoon) and an old man in nightgown a horn.  Somehow the country exists in a time warp from the late 18th century - elaborate military uniforms for the rich, bucolic blouses for the poor.  Because the locals have other values, a bigger, more aggressive country threatens  to take them over. Princess-Regent Maria Renata (played by Diane Napier, Tauber's real-life wife) decrees music should henceforth be banned in Look-a , with severe penalties.  Since the film was made in 1936 the political parallels are obvious. This isn't just a comedy.

Jonah J Whistler, an American newspaperman, arrives in Look-a driving a horse-drawn carraige with his daughter Sadie. She wears early 19th century dimity, but she's utterly "modern" with her wisecracking repartee.   Since the secret police are cracking down on music, there's a mixup at customs. Jonah and Sadie's trunk has been swtched for a cache of musical instruments which include violin, balalaika, trumpet and much, much else.  "But I don;'t even know what a harpishord (sic) is" snorts Jonas.  Enter too,  Richard Tauber as Mario Carlini, a tenor with golden upper notes which he can extend almost to a scream, with a habit of bursting  into song at the oddest moments. The brigands are so impressed that they protect him from the secret police. Now that the people of Look-a have instruments again, they can organize concerts, just like dissidents getting together underground. While checking out the forest for  a meeting place, Tauber, who remains  Tauber whatever role he's playing, meets Princess Maria Renata and charms her, against her better judgement.

To cut a long story short, the son of the head of the Secret Police, Count Strozzi, falls in love with Sadie and she with him. when Tauber, Durante and the peasants are arrested and put into prison, Strozzi junior helps them.  From his cell, Tauber sings, so loudly that the whole principality can hear and join in. Revoution ! The population storm the gates of the prison and the musicians march out, heading the cheering masses. The scene is a fairly pointed take on the Solidarity Song sequence in Kuhle Wampe, which the Nazis didn't like, one bit.  So the princess relents and orders Look-a to make music its local industry.  Gold coins fill the coffers ! Music is OK, as long as it serves commerce and politics.

Vaughan Williams Symphonies 7 "Antartica" & 9 : Manze, RLPO

Andrew Manze's  Ralph Vaughan Willims series with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra with Onyx continues with Symphony no 7 "Antartica" and Symphony no 9.  Manze 's Antartica includes short superscriptions (spoken by Timothy West) before each section, though the composer had meant them to be read silently.  This may drive some apoplectic with rage, but this is nothing new.  In 1954, Sir Adrian Boult set a precedent, employing Sir John Gielgud.  Though Vaughan Williams  had not intended to have the quotations spoken aloud in performance, he went along with Boult's decision.  Some years later, André Previn followed suit, with Sir Ralph Richardson.  It is also highly relevant that the symphony was created in the years after the film Scott of the Antarctic (1948), starring John Mills, and James Robertson Justice, directed by Charles Frend, for which Vaughan Williams wrote the soundtrack.  It is  worth watching the film (via the British Film Institute), because it is a classic of British cinema at a time when the British film industry was in its heyday.

Scott and his companions struggle against overwhelming forces. They are alone, on a vast continent, at the mercy of forces beyond their control.  Long sequences are shot without dialogue, focussing on the vast, empty landscape as expressed through the music as if  Nature itself  had been given voice. The colours are muted : the whiteness of snow, the darkness of night, intensifying the bleakness. The characters are loosely sketched, and Scott's team of dogs feature frequently.. In ths vast landscape, mortals count for very little.  Effectively the film "is" music, a tone poem with visuals and occasional moments of speech.  The sky will not fall if the symphony is heard with text,  since there are other opportunities to hear the purely orchestral version, and it does us good to remember that without the film, the symphony might not exist.  In any case, if a listener cannot focus on the music, the fault lies with the listener, since this is mighty fine music indeed.

A well-paced Prelude, the pulse suggesting a slow, purposeful trek in difficult terrain. The orchestra wells up, at once ominous and majestic, spotlit by cymbals before proceeding again: The soprano (Rowan Pierce) heads the wordless chorus, eerily enticing the strugglers forward. In the strings and percussion, there are evocations of winds and swirling snow. In the austere later sections, textures open out, suggesting open horizons: trumpets calling forth as the movement enters a final, expansive crescendo.  In "Landscape", the lento movement, Manze's textures are lean, emphasizing the contrast that is to come when the organ enters,  ("Ye ice falls !"), a baleful reminder of what the explorers are up against.  As the sounds fade, the Intermezzo is introduced by a short sentence. In the Epilogue the value of quotation proves itself. Scott is dead,  forced into silence, but his words live on.  "I do not regret this journey; we took risks, we knew we took them, things have come out against us, therefore we have no cause for complaint."  One could blank these words out, but to ignore them would diminish emotional impact.

Vaughan Williams's final symphony, Symphony no 9,  receives an almost elegaic reading from Manze which brings out the darker undercurrents beneath the surface associations with Hardy and Wessex. Tess of the d'Urbervilles wasn't pastoral romance, but tragedy.  Against the darkness of this performance, the clarinet and violin sound clean and poignant. In the scherzo, the saxophone trio are appropriately jarring and discordant : the "joke" here is malevolent.  The Finale isn't tranquil so much as suppressed.  

Nothing Venture - Surreal Nostalgia England 1948

Nothing Venture, NOT "nothing ventured". What is a "nothing" venture ?  Perhaps the title is meant to be ironic, since the film is a  fantasy. An old man is writing, correcting his words as he goes "It was a lovely day in June, when three boys, funnily enough  named Tom, Dick and Harry were walking across the sand between Penforth and Bywater, looking for adventure"  Out of nowhere the boys pop up. "We heard you were writing a new book and thought you'd like to include us in it again".  So this is a surreal world which exists in the imagination, as if frozen forever in time. So much for the sentimental nostalgia, laid on with a shovel.  It's not reality, even though it resembles an idealized England that a fortunate few were lucky enough to experience, for a time. This film was released in 1948 by British Lion and Elstree Independent, and made in Viking Studios of Kensington. None of which now exist  But boys of a certain vintage will swoon, transported back to childhoods long past. Delicious escapist dreams!

Tom, Dick and Harry were acted by "The Artemus Boys", Philip, Peter and Jackie, who may or may not have been brothers, since they don't look genetically related, and speak with wildly differing  accents  One is  definitely northern, with vowels as wide as the horizon, though the story is set somewhere on the south coast (Penforth and Bywater don't exist in the same vicinity). But Tom, Dick and Harry cycle off on gearless bikes, through a quaint old town, through fields and  up steep hills, to a tower with a view over several counties, approached through Norfolk Island pines   The boys overhear some men discussing "the Boss"  Just as villains in Enid Blyton are easy to spot because they're not white, these men must be villains because they drive a big car. What are they doing in this remote spot?  Is Michael, a "flatfoot" in a trench coat on their trail?  If so, why is he whistling loudly so all can hear ?  Fortuitously, a lady gets knocked off her horse and Michael drives her and the boys back to her place, Diana's extremely wealthy, and a horse breeder, but she and Michael, rather too posh to be a cop, hit it off "This isn't going to turn into a love story? says one of the boys squeamishly.

Michael, Diana and the boys head off to SoutHEMpton (Diana's accent),stopping off first in a fancy hotel,with a dance band. The two older boys wear tuxes They can''t order food – the menu's in French.  The younger boy gets a job as a busboy to spy on the villains, who are staying in the hotel. Next day, they're down at the docks, where the Queen Mary is docking. Great scene, artistically shot, with music that sounds like parody Elgar though it's the best part of the whole soundtrack  The villains are smuggling a secret weapon. The stiff upper lip earnestness is a satire on the militaristic mindset left over from the war that's just ended, but lives on in "boy's magazines". Hence big words are spoken syllable by syllable with histrionic exaggeration.  Diana doesn't turn up at a race meeting but her horse box does. She's been kidnapped by the villains, one of whom has "ways of making people talk", because he ran a concentration camp during the war (I kid you not!)  Diana's Dad is a scientist who knows secret inventions. Luckily one of the boys followed the horsebox and scribbles a clue in chalk for the others to find   Diana and Dad head to a secret underground chamber beneath the tower   Daddy blows up the secret weapon and Diana embraces Michael. "It did turn out a love story after all"  The author reappears "Good bye old chaps, perhaps we'll meet again" The boys are sen walking back towards the horizon at the beach, whence they came.

The Artemus boys made one previous film The Great  Escapade in 1947 for the same director, John Baxter, with a script by the same writer, Geoffrey Orme, and then seem to have disappeared   Perhaps they're still around, in their 80's but they'll remain forever young in Nothing Venture.. The eldest boy  had star quality, and was very personable.  Baxter and Orme had rather longer careers, Orme writing a segment for Dr Who, in the 60's.  I loved Nothing Venture because of its tongue in cheek good humour, and the shots of a lost England,where people cycle through quaint countryside, and class divisions are entrenched, though the Artemus boys, Diana and Michael break down stereotypes  The music was by Kennedy Russell, who wrote for film. Extra ! A genealogist friend ran a search and found that there haven't been any people named "Artemus" in the UK since the mid 19th century. So, clearly a stage entity.  Pity, it would be nice to know what became of them, esp the bright one. (Subsequent thinking : Artemus is almost certainly a fake name because the boys aren't brothers and two of them clearly aren't thespian material. So who was the talented one ? Someone who can act liie should have been in movies. Compare photos of Richard Attenborough in his youth. Think about it !)
 

Black Britain - murder at RAM

"Sapphire - the sensational story of a girl whoi didn't belong". Basil Dearden's film from 1959 would be shocking today, especially in an increasingly divided society.  Filmed at the Royal Academy of Music, and at a jazz club in Charlotte Street. The students have changed, though. David Harris, a student architect, who has a scholarship to study in Rome, looks middle aged , though he's only 20.  The only hip thing about him is his duffle coat.  His girlfriend, Sapphire Robbins, has been murdered on Hampstead Heath.  The police break into Sapphire's room and discover she used to play records all the time "She was at the RAM!" says the landlady.  The cops assume she's been killed by a jealous lowlife from her double life. Then Sapphire's brother comes down from Birmingham. He's black.  "Are you her half brother?" ask the cops. "No" says brother.Sapphire was mixed race but passed for white in white society.

Sapphire was pregnant. "I've seen the autopsy" said her brother. He's a doctor.  "We'll find who I did it" say the cops. Dr Robbins isn't so sure. "When I was a boy", he says, "another boy touched me, and said 'nothing rubbed off ". But something rubbed onto him. Sapphire's landlady's scared in case word gets round that she rented rooms to blacks.  Even David didn't know Sapphire was black "until last week". A policeman visits Sapphire's GP. "Didn't you know she was....coloured ? You can always tell, you know". "Can you tell a policeman by his big feet?" says the GP.  The police track down Sapphire's black friends who say she started passing for white after being snubbed by someone who remarked "I see you like the junglies".  The jazz club owner says, sarcastically, "once the lilyskins hear the beat of the bongo, they can't hide". Even Sapphire's friends think Sapphire's black ex, Johnny, might have killed her.  He gets beat up by a white gang. Luckily - ironically - the cops arrest him.

Tensions in David's family.  His mother's worried. His sister, a bitch, snaps at her kids "Ask no questions and you'll get no lies". Wonderfully tight script which keeps up the tension without stop.  The racist cop says "These spades are trouble, send them back where they came".  If crimes could so easily be solved ! His inspector, though, doesn't agree. "Given the right atmosphere" her says "you can  organize riots against anyone. Blacks, Jews, Irish, evern policemen with big feet". Racist cop checks out Johnny's alibi and realizes he's in the clear.  David would lose his scholarship if he married.  Kaput to the family's ambitions. David snaps. Far from welcoming Sapphire, his family hate blacks.  The killer confesses ! But of course, it's Sapphire's fault for being black and uppity.  Brilliant film, utterly relevant today. Now at least, mixed race or any race, don't have to hide.

Prophetic London Belongs to Me

A petty criminal, peruses the comics. "Easy Pickings", he thinks. But "easy pickings" and easy answers don't mean taking control.   London Belongs to Me now seems terrifyingly prophetic. The film begins in the London of 1938 : social change is already underway.   Once grand terraces are now multiple occupancy rooming houses, with lodgers who can't meet their rents, or feed their gas meters.  The landlady, Mrs Vizzard, lives in grand delusion, still dressed in Edwardian garb, her home cluttered as if in Victorian time warp.  A new lodger (Mr Squales) turns up. He's so unnatural that she thinks he's an actor. He is, but not quite in the way she thinks.  Mrs Vizzard  hosts seances for dodgy mediums who claim to commune with the dead and foretell the future. Think on that.

It's Christmas, and Mr and Mrs Josser, daughter Doris and Uncle Henry are having Christmas dinner.  Fellow tenant Connie fakes a faint to con a free feed.  The family discuss the Munich Agreement.  As he cracks a walnut, Uncle Henry says "If we don't wake up, Hitler will have us like this!"  "For goodness sake", says Mrs Josser, "Put on your paper hat and enter into the spirit".  Percy the flashy young spiv takes Doris to a dodgy night club, which gets raided. Percy escapes but Doris gets caught. But the policeman, Sgt  Bill Wilson, who takes her details, doesn't note them in the right place, because he fancies her.   Hoping to make enough money to start a business, Percy steals a car.  Spotting the police, he panics. The  ex-girlfriend who forced him to take her for a ride is killed, though it's not exactly clear how and by whom.  Even Mr Squales worries that he might have been involved, without "being himself".  . 

Mrs Vizzard learns that Mr Squales has been faking photographs of ghosts at seances, and kicks him out.  "I've no use for frauds and common adventurers".  Squales overhears Sgt Wilson order Percy's arrest and uses this to have a  trance "revelation" . When Percy is picked up, Mrs Vizzard is fooled all over again.  In prison, Percy has graphic nightmares. "I never did it!" he cries.   Mr Josser uses the money he's saved for a cottage in the country to hire a defence lawyer for Percy, even though he doesn't like the lad, because it's the moral thing to do.  Mr Squales turns up for the prosecution. It seems the girlfriend was killed by a "blow to the head" though she was hit by a passing car after falling out of  Percy's car.  Percy is condemned.  Won over by Mr Josser's generosity, Uncle Henry organizes a mission to save Percy, and raises a petition that gets so many names that it has to be carried to the Home Office pushed in a pram. Wonderful shots of the procession of protestors crossing Westminster Bridge in pouring rain !  Big Ben booms. It's 5 pm. Are they too late ? But the newspapers announce that Percy's been reprieved.  It's August the 31st, 1939...; what happens next ?  Air raid sirens. Mr Squales, now married to Mrs Vizzard, says the spirits tell him the war will soon be over. Mr and Mrs Josser are staying in London, despite the war.  They wouldn't leave Doris.  The film ends with a shot of Dulcimer Street. "They certainly are fine houses" says the narrator.  So are some of the people within.

London Belongs to Me was made by Sidney Gilliat in 1948. It stars Richard Attenborough, then aged 25 though he looks even younger.  It's long been one of the great classics of British cinema, but after the Brexit debacle, perhaps it means even more, now.

Turn the Key Softly - love poem for London

Not many films start with credits like: "We acknowledge with gratitude the help of the Home Office, The Prison Commissioners and the Governor of HM Prison, Holloway".  Turn the Key Softly begins with a shot of Holloway Prison,  as it was in 1953. It's oddly nostalgic. Veiled in heavy London fog, the prison looks mysterious, almost romantic.,Within minutes though, we're up against reality. Three women prisoners are being released. The scene's filmed inside. The guards are dehumanized - you can almost smell the repression. In prison, the women are anonymous. They collect their belongings to return outside. "Until you see people in their own clothes, you don't realize what you've been mixing with in this place" Who's that familiar face - Joan Collins  aged 19, dolled up in a deliciously bizarre peplum, which sums up the personality of her part, Stella Jarvis, flibbertigibbet good-time girl.

London itself stars in this film. The camera lingers, lovingly, on scenes shot on location. Monica Marsden ( Yvonne Mitchell) goes home to a flat in a terrace near St Mary's, Bryanston Square - nothing has changed in 60 years !  We also see another part of London which has disappeared, though - rooming houses in run down Victorian mansions, seedily keeping up pretensions. The landlady lets Mrs Quilliam (Kathleen Harrison) have her old room back. It's unchanged. The landlady's even looked after Johnny, the dog. Imagine landlords that laidback now.  Onc scene seems to have been filmed in a real pub, not a set.  Few pubs look like that now.  We see the Underground, pristine and spotless, and Trafalgar Square minus tourists. We see the West End, and something of London's future. Mrs Quilliam's daughter is "aspirational". She's escaped the East End for an identikit house in  some outer suburb and shudders at the thought of "lower class". The cinematography is so poetic that this film is a kind of love story for London.

Turn the Key Softly was written, produced and directed by Maurice Cowan and Jack Lee, at Pinewood Studios, when the British film industry was at its artistic peak. Based on a novel by John Brophy, it's a tightly paced drama, with deftly written dialogue, and strong characterizations, even in the minor parts - all of them London "types", lovingly drawn. Stella brags to her prostitute friends that her boyfriend's "in transport". Since the action all takes place within 24 hours, the narrative moves swiftly. Stella loses the £3 her boyfriend gives her to live on for a week, (!!!!) but gets it back by fleecing the stranger who thought he'd arranged a date with Monica. Unlike Stella and Mrs |Quilliam, who are feckless kleptos, Monica has never been in trouble with the law before. She was arrested because her boyfriend David (Terence Morgan) let her take the rap for one of his burglaries. Clearly, she loves him, but sees through his games. Thinking they're going to the theatre, she wears an evening gown. Now, you don't wear yards of tulle, even at Glyndebourne. David, however, has set up another crime. This time, Monica doesn't help. David is trapped on a roof, fighting off the police.  Wonderful cinematography again, worthy of much better known films noir. The camera shows the West End theatre in awkward angular shots. It's a wet night in theatreland : the camera contrasts textures: stone walls, cramped stairwells, metal fire escapes, the machinery with which the police winch themselves onto the roof. each frame adds to the sense of tension and danger.

The tightness of the script is further enhanced  by the clear-sighted anti-sentimentality of the plot. Monica is a strong person, determined not to be dragged down, like poor, dotty Mrs Quilliam, who gets killed by a car as she squeals in delight and relief, having found her lost dog. Stella's getting married, but how long will it be before she goes back to her old ways  Young as she is, she may squander her future and end up like Mrs Quilliam. 

Mischa Spoliansky wrote the soundtrack and conducted the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, when orchestras did movie work on a regular basis. Spoliansky was a star in German theatre and cabaret, before being forced into exile. In London, he built a successful  new career, writing scores for Norman Wisdom movies, and many others, including Sanders of the River and King Solomon's Mines. In Turn the Key Softly, Spoliansky's wit shines through. Stella sings trashy pop, but Monica's more sophisticated taste is underlined by quotations from Poulenc Les chemins d'amour.