Holiday (1938)

 

Katherine Hepburn and Cary Grant in Holiday

What could be better than a film directed by George Cukor and starring Cary Grant and Katherine Hepburn? Well, many other films, actually.

Holiday was a great disappointment. Since two of the three most important criteria for a great film were in place (good director, good actors), the weak point must be the script. Clearly, Holiday is a filmed version of a play; but there are plenty of great films that started life as a play (Arsenic and Old Lace is an example). Why the film was so poor constitutes an interesting case study. The biggest single reason is simply that the film wasn’t very funny.

The basic premise is simple. Johnny Case (Grant) meets Julia Seton (Doris Nolan), the elder daughter of a fabulously wealthy but dysfunctional family. He is presented to the father, who judges the potential son-in-law exclusively for business acumen and social eligibility. The scene where Grant is interviewed by the family father is indeed funny.

But compare this scene, or indeed any scene in Holiday, with The Awful Truth. The quality of the repartee between Grant and Irene Dunne is way beyond anything in this film.

The stiff family setting is contrasted with scenes in the play room, where the children grew up, and where the tone is much more relaxed. More relaxed, but not completely relaxed.

What is Johnny Case planning to do? The marriage is arranged and the father approves – until Case reveals he intends to stop working (albeit financed by his own savings), and to travel until he discovers – what, exactly? He says: 

Johnny Case: The world's changing out there. There are a lot of new, exciting ideas running around. Some may be right and some may be cockeyed but they're affecting all our lives. I want to know how I stand, where I fit in the picture, what it's all gonna mean to me. I can't find that out sitting behind some desk in an office, so as soon as I get enough money together, I'm going to knock off for a while.”

What exactly does that mean? The playwright had to be very careful not to suggest doing nothing (as that would give the wrong impression of this earnest young man, even though Case uses the word “holiday”), nor to suggest any kind of radicalism (what if he discovers Marxism? Or fascism?). He could discover philanthropy, which might provide some kind of justification for marrying into such wealth. 

In the end, Johnny Case runs off with Linda Seton, the younger sister, who is more bohemian than her sister, but no doubt equally rich. If Grant is seeking wisdom, as Linda points out, the family he is marrying into has enough money for ten working lives, so he can spend the rest of his life searching for wisdom at his leisure. In any case, what has Linda Seton been doing living at home all the time, with a family she finds so distasteful? Waiting for Mr Right to appear? Does she have nothing better to do? Apart from meeting Grant, her only achievement in the film is to refuse to appear at her sister's engagement party. That's not so funny. 

Other examples of funniness that fall flat are a couple who are friends of Grant, Professor Potter (Edward Everett Horton) and his wife Susan (Jean Dixon). But their wordplay is trite and Grant hardly shines with them. Nor, I am afraid, does Hepburn.

In the end, Case sets off on his journey to find new and exciting ideas, by going on a cruise liner. I don’t think he is likely to find many ideas there.

Drive your plow over the bones of the dead

 

Blake, Proverbs of Hell

Here is a remarkable novel, by Olga Tokarczuk. Part murder mystery, part description of life in a remote Polish village near the Czech border, it defies your comfortable assumptions and keeps you guessing until the end. But it's not just about who did it. 

The title, and quotations at the start of each chapter, are from Blake, and this is one of several strands artfully pulled together by the novelist to create a very satisfying combination: a good narrative (you want to know what happens next), a remarkable narrator, and a cast of oddballs. This is one of those novels where everyone is slightly strange, none more so than the narrator herself. The narrator, an elderly woman, is keen on astrology and animal rights, as well as having a very idiosyncratic and opinionated view on most things: for example, she dreams up nicknames for each of the other characters (“Big Foot”, “Good News”, “Oddball”). As a reader, you are unsure of her pronouncements, which are a combination of well-argued and totally wacky; sometimes both at the same time. The strange, tense atmosphere of the book is reflected in the use of capital letters for many, but not all, of the nouns, reflecting what is presumably the narrator’s odd sense of priorities in the original Polish. As the narrator points out with delight, single old women are not noticed any more in literature than they are in real life, which is justification alone for reading the book.

The narrator is a passionate defender of animal rights, and she is always ready to have confrontations with hunters in the nearby woods. Yet after reading the novel, you are struck by the justice of many of her statements. Quite by accident, I notice a glowing review in the TLS of two memoirs by gamekeepers, with such choice (and seemingly unironic) statements as:

At the heart of these two gamekeepers' memoirs lies a paradox: loving animals can lead to a life that involves killing surprisingly large numbers of them ... When, in her first work placement as a gamekeeper, she [Portia Simpson] shoots her first stag, ambivalence gives way to relief and pleasure at a job well done.

Maren Meinhardt, TLS, 19 May 2018

Fact stranger than fiction. The strange mixture of sense and nonsense by the narrator is matched on many other topics as well, where she is equally  opinionated and, frankly, nutty. For example, she views describes the nearby Czech Republic as a kind of idyllic paradise compared to her Polish village. Her references to astrology are believable (we believe such a potty old woman would think such things) but an indictment of her judgement. Her response to moments of major trauma is disconcerting, to say the least. 

When you have completed the book, I think you get an idea of the link between William Blake and the narrator. She could be Blake himself, with all his weird system-building combined with memorable phrasing; a Blake reappearing in the 21st century.

The Awful Truth (1937)

Cary Grant and Irene Dunne in The Awful Truth: they even look good in pajamas

Films, for me, need to inspire. When you have watched a couple of turkeys, you start to lose faith in the cinema, so you turn to what you hope will be a sure success. Hence, we watched Charade (Stanley Donen, 1963), because it starred Cary Grant. Unfortunately, at 59, it was a rather too old Cary Grant. Supposed to be playing a suave jewel thief, he struck me as someone who would rather be tucked up in bed of an evening. He was too suntanned, too complacent, to be playing the role of a thief. And he didn’t display any real chemistry with his co-star.

So, in an attempt to remember Grant at his peak, I watched The Awful Truth (Leo McCarey, 1937), with Grant 25 years younger. The story is simplicity itself. A married couple, in the process of divorcing, decide they prefer being together and are reunited. There’s not much doubt about the likely ending: it’s pretty clear throughout the film that whatever magic you see on the screen is when Grant and his partner Irene Dunne are together, and it’s only a matter of time before they abandon all pretence of separating and get back together. From their screen presence alone, you feel this is a just ending. Entertaining though the other actors are, Dunne and Grant seem to inspire each other to a wholly different plane of acting, one in which murmurs and hesitations are as important as the scripted lines.

They don’t simply recite their lines, they rework those lines around gestures, of mumbling, of half-finished statements. Usually it is only Grant who can put meaning into a simple “mmm”. Here, they both do it! It is remarkable to watch, and truly cinematic. Often it is just the slightest gesture, or sound, both of which would probably be lost in the theatre, where everything has to be communicated on a large scale.

As for Dunne, she displays a majestic scornful wit that sends shivers down your spine. Accused of infidelity with her music teacher after a night at a hotel, the music teacher tries to explain what happened, and Dunne then has one of the great put-down lines:

-        Armand Duvalle: I am a great teacher, not a great lover.

-        Dunne: That’s right, Armand. No one could ever accuse you of being a great lover.

Apparently Leo McCarey, the director, was responsible for many of the early Laurel and Hardy films – he even introduced the comedy pair to each other. The Laurel and Hardy trick of preparing a gag slowly, so you the viewer can see the disaster looming, is the same technique used in The Awful Truth. Grant comes to see his former wife and unwittingly finds himself in a concert recital where she is singing in front of a rapt audience. We feel that Grant will not be able to control himself simply to become a member of the audience. Sure enough, within a few seconds he has fallen off his chair and disrupted the entire recital.

So astonishing and attention-grabbing are the moments when Grant and Dunne are together that it is only after the film is over that you being to notice its defects. 

One of the defects of The Awful Truth: there is a dog (Mr Smith)

Grant and Dunne play a fabulously wealthy and tasteless couple. The have servants to serve the drinks. They have investments but don’t seem to do any work. Their house is monumental and vulgar.  They have someone to choose the decor (I hope they didn't play any part in it). They are snobbish and elitist. In social situations, there is a definite code that should be followed, with condemnation reserved for those who don’t understand this wealth-based code. When Grant meets a showgirl in a fancy restaurant, the woman’s reputation is shattered when she sings a song about the wind and her dress is blown up from below. Funny it may be, but tasteless according to the arbiters (Grant and Dunne) and so to be laughed at, not with.

When introduced to a man from Oklahoma (this is before the musical), Grant has a series of snide remarks about this rural hell compared with New York. Dunne soon joins in the condemnation.

Finally, and most insultingly, Dunne, whose ferocious wit is enough to put any man in his place, gets her former husband back by dressing seductively and artfully persuading her partner to join her in bed (a consummation that, of course, happens off screen after the film is over). Would any man with the social awareness of Grant allow himself to be caught in such a way? Would any woman with such withering contempt for other men throw herself so openly at her former partner? I don’t think so. Of course, most film directors have enjoyed making Cary Grant squirm. But the awful truth is, we don’t really care. We just want the two of them on screen for as long as possible, he in a dinner suit, without a hair out of place, and she in yet another dramatic yet vulgar backless dress (a new outfit every ten minutes or so), despite the fact that they are surrounded by tasteless bourgeois opulence. All we see is the most stylish couple in the world, with their effortless dialogue propelling the film into paradise of sorts: our movie paradise, where that wit goes back and forth all day, without end.  

 

Isleham, a village in the Fens

Opinions differ with visitors to the Fens. There are those who find the landscape compelling, while others make remarks about going mad in this landscape, and compare it to those Swiss valleys where the sun never shines. I can see both points of view, but I find some of the landscape quite compelling

 

If you like your nature uncurated, unbeautified, the stark, raw verges, the opposite of pretty, have their own charm:

 

This visit to the Fens was based around Isleham (pronounced “eyes-lam”), noted for a former priory building.

 

The priory wasn’t open (unsurprisingly), and seems to play the role of car park to the village, but the church was open, as well as the village pub. Here there was a couple of musicians doing cover versions of pop classics to a crowded garden full of drinkers. So there was some life in the village.

 After visiting the church, we did a circular walk alongside fields, with the church tower in view all the time (which didn’t prevent getting lost by misreading the map).

What can you say about Isleham? For the most part, it resembled so many other Fen villages. A small, busy Co-op, no other shops, no real central focus to the village. More than most Fen villages, it looks quite cut-off from the rest of the world. The roads to it, like so many roads in the Fens, are full of potholes, as if you are being reminded as you approach that nobody expects to be going anywhere else once they have arrived. I couldn’t imagine any kind of employment in the village apart from farms, which today require almost no casual labour. Yet there were many new houses in the village, for the most part ignoring any local building traditions, yet here and there a few of them with garden walls attached to remnants of much earlier walls of clunch, as if the new build had almost (but not quite) obliterated the medieval origins.

But the present-day isolation is nothing compared with earlier years, it seems. Mary Coe, aged 86, recalled that in the 1970s “No one left the village [of Isleham], and there were no outsiders in the village either .. if there was a stranger about, you wanted to know who they were, and where they come from.” This quote is from the excellent Imperial Mud: the Fight for the Fens, by James Boyce, 2020. Isleham cannot always have been like this. In the church was a major surprise:  some fascinating, vivid brasses, and a magnificent, brightly-coloured pair of Renaissance tombs:  

 

They are monuments to members of the Peyton family; the one above is Robert Peyton, died 1590. The Peytons also paid to put in a dramatic clerestory to the nave of the church, and an angel roof. At the time the Peytons lived, the Fens were not drained, so the village must have been an island, with communication to the outside world largely by boat. There in the priory was a handful of monks (no more than four); street names such as “the Causeway” suggest the aquatic nature of the place. The combination of grand tombs, a priory turned reused as a barn, and the rows of stark trees, create a strange, rather eerie effect.

A less elitist vision for education

 

Cambridge Corpus Christi College: wonderful education for the few

We all believe we are experts on education, because we have all experienced it. Unlike, say, going to sea, or exploring Antarctica, we have not only suffered from it (or enjoyed it) but we have also had a chance to reflect on it (because most of the people who talk about education have ended their own formal education). Those in full-time education usually have experience of little else.

So, what can we say about education? Firstly, education in the United States and the UK is like a private London club. Entry to the elite institutions is very exclusive, reserved for the rich, and becomes self-perpetuating. Attempts to democratize education have usually foundered as a result of externalities. In the UK, the abolition of grammar schools was accompanied by the rise of comprehensive education. But comprehensive schools don’t mix all classes. They are largely restricted by catchment area. I lived in an area of Oxford that comprised the catchment area for The Cherwell School. Its results were considerably better than other schools in Oxford, almost entirely because of its wealthy parents in the catchment area.  

Higher education has similar external restrictions. The elite Ivy League institutions in the US are all private. Admission to these institutions is becoming steadily more expensive in real terms. A review of recent books on education in the TLS reveals that “Yale spends $166,000 annually on instruction per student, while its neighbour, Southern Connecticut State, spends $15,000”. Does that represent the respective value of the education provided? Hardly.

Here are some suggestions. Education as a set of credit vouchers, the same value for all. Full-time courses replaced by part-time and online classes, on smaller, more focused subjects. Lifetime education provided by universities who split their role between research and teaching – and don’t pretend that those who research can teach. An end to undergraduate education at Oxford and Cambridge, or perhaps each college has to choose between one or the other, but not both. A genuine attempt to end the elitism of UK higher education.  

The gangster who brushes his teeth before going to bed

 

Sharing pate with your partner: the most powerful moment in Touchez pas au grisbi

He not only brushes his teeth, but wears very traditional striped pyjamas – and has a spare pair for visitors. He has clean sheets in the cupboard of his flat. His performance, believe it or not, is one of the greatest gangster depictions ever: Jean Gabin as Max in Touchez pas au grisbi (Don’t touch the loot!) directed by Jacques Becker, 1954. 

The enduring image from this film is all about Gabin. There is action, but you remember Gabin's character: a pensive, considered, even moral gangster. He does not act in a hurry. He only carries a gun in emergencies, when he is threatened. The theme of the film is loyalty: he and his partner Riton have just carried out a major theft of eight gold bars from Orly Airport. This, Max explains, is to be his last job; now he can retire. He has been with his partner Riton (Rene Dary) for over 20 years, but learns during the course of the film (just over 24 hours, an evening, a night, and the following day and night) that Riton has revealed details of the robbery to his girlfriend Josy (a very young Jeanne Moreau). She in turn has talked to a rival gangster, Angelo (Lino Ventura).

Jeanne Moreau and Jean Gabin: does this man look like a gangster?

Max appears in almost every scene, and there is just one moment where Max, in a voice-over, reveals his disappointment in his partner. During the film Max reveals his honour and absolute faith in his friend: to rescue Riton, he gives exchanges all the loot with Angelo.

The film is worthy of Tarantino. There is some shooting, but most of the film is dialogue between villains. The police are almost completely absent, apart from a couple of sweet types on bicycles.

This is no glorification of violence; it is a homage to someone who shows himself to be, for the duration of the film, an ethical gangster. Max trusts his friends, until he learns they have deceived him, and even then, he behaves honourably towards them. Most noticeably, in almost the first scene of the film, when he is invited to a night club to see their two female companions, Lola and Josy, perform, he leaves early and goes home to bed. Not for him the bright lights and expensive seduction. He appears indifferent to a chorus of almost bare-breasted women dancing in front of him. In other words, women are OK - in their place. Some women (the manager of the restaurant where the gangsters eat) can be trusted; but not all.  

Of course, Max is not perfect. We discover later that he is susceptible to female attractions – he has sexual encounters with girlfriends in the middle of the day (so he still gets his early night). He treats them honourably, but does not divulge any secrets to them; he doesn’t lose his head over them.

What will stay with me for a long time is the wonderful, simple scene when he takes Riton, his partner, back to an apartment to stay the night. He opens a jar of pate and some toast from a packet, together with a bottle of wine, and the two companions eat together. Following that, they brush their teeth and put their pyjamas on. It’s a very powerful image of shared food, shared trust, lack of pretension: quite the opposite of what you would expect from a gangster film, and all the more impressive as a result.

 A truly remarkable film.