Which were the glory years for Antwerp?

 

Rubens, portrait of Anna Anthonis, c1615-18. Pious, yes, but what a face Rubens has captured!

Antwerp certainly meets the criteria for a very visitable city: great restaurants, great museums, great buildings, very walkable – and one of the world’s most astonishing station designs. But when I visit any city, I like to create a kind of coherent story to the city. It is somehow satisfying to explain a city by looking at major forces affecting it, and to see the results in the built environment, and in the artistic works that were produced in it. So, for example, you can explain the sudden reversal of fortune that affected Bruges, or Rye, or equally, the proximity of strong flows of water and nearby mineral deposits that enabled regions such as Coalbrookdale to flourish in the Industrial Revolution. 

What can we say about Antwerp? Its history is tightly linked to the Scheldt. Antwerp is a great natural port, since it provides safe anchorage, being a long way inland from the sea. Although the Scheldt is still tidal at Antwerp, which means locks are required, Antwerp also has container terminals with direct access to the sea without locks (which must be similar to the situation at Felixstowe in the UK). But the Scheldt hasn’t always been accessible to ships. Is this the cause of Antwerp’s rise and fall? 

Michael Pye’s recent book, Antwerp: The Glory Years covers the 16^th century , when Antwerp flourished as never before. This weekend I am visiting Antwerp, but I don’t get the impression of a 16^th-century city. In many respects, the visible golden age appears to be the 17^th century: a hundred years later. Is this  simply my misreading? 

Let’s glance at the history books. Few cities can have had experienced such about-turns as Antwerp. It reached a peak of success during the first half of the 16^th century; it was responsible for 75% of all Low Countries trade in 1549. Yet in 1576, Spanish troops mutinied and killed some 8,000 citizens. Then in 1585 the Spanish recaptured Antwerp and incorporated it into the Spanish Netherlands. Protestants were given four years to convert or leave, and around half the population left. Hence a population decline from a peak of around 100,000 down to 49,000 at the end of the century. 

As if this wasn’t enough, in 1648, under the Treaty of Westphalia, the Scheldt, the river by which Antwerp traded with the world, was closed to all non-Dutch ships. This catastrophe ruined the port, until under Napoleon, 150 years later, the port was reopened, and by the mid-19^th century Antwerp was the world’s third largest port. Even today is it second only to Rotterdam in Europe.

 

How does this compare with artistic achievement? Antwerp is exceptionally good for museums relating the city with its inhabitants; the Rubens House is a great example. One of the best museums is the Plantin Museum. Christophe Plantin created one of the biggest printers and publishers in Europe. He founded the company in Antwerp in 1548, and within a year (if you believe Wikipedia) “he headed one of the most well-respected publishing houses in Europe” (whatever that means). His greatest achievement was a multi-volume Bible, the Biblia Sacra or Biblia Regia, published 1568-73. However, the publishing company appears to have continued to grow thrive for over a hundred years after that. 

Rubens, 1577-1640, the greatest Antwerp painter and one of the most famous painters of all time, lived in Antwerp for most of his life, and (together with his vast studio team) produced some 1,400 works, excluding copies! This sounds like success, by any measure. 

While the Rubens House was closed for this visit, we visited another stunning collection of 17^th-century work, the Snijders and Rockox House, actually two houses next to each other, celebrating an artist and a politician who both flourished in the first half of the 17^th century. Incidentally, this museum was a model of how to display a small collection effectively.

 It certainly seems, by this very simplistic assessment, that the evidence of the artefacts around the city suggest that, that despite losing half its population in the years to 1600, the remaining citizens of Antwerp created some astonishing achievements, both cultural (Rubens, van Dyck, Jordaens) and intellectual (the Plantin firm of publishers continuing and growing during the 17^th century). All this raises, of course, many questions. Can you make such sweeping judgements about a city on the evidence of one or two buildings? I haven’t even considered what effect these glory years, whether 16^th or 17^th centuries have on the present-day city – a subject for another post. Today was the Antwerp marathon, which meant that 12,500 runners passed the front door of the Rockox Museum, probably without noticing it was there. 

But the evidence above leaves me wanting to know more. For example: much of the success of the Netherlands following independence has been attributed to its religious tolerance. But is it as simple as that? Has the link between Protestantism and economic growth, as formulated by Weber a hundred or more years ago, been overstated? Was it possible for a city to be Catholic yet progressive? Antwerp has vast, bloated, Baroque churches, and Catholicism is still very noticeable in the historic centre: there is a statue of the Virgin or a saint looking down at you from most street corners. How was it possible, or was it indeed possible, for great art to flourish in a Counter-Reformation climate? 

All this requires more investigation, but, sadly, I don’t think Michael Pye’s Antwerp: The Glory Years is likely to give me the answer I am looking for. I haven’t got the patience to extricate a coherent story from Pye’s account. After 20 pages I had to look to other sources to find out what was going on. The journalistic style meant that every major event was introduced by looking at an individual, and only slowly revealing the event being described. It’s a time-honoured journalistic trick, which becomes annoying when you are trying to find out what happened. My response is to skip a paragraph or two to see if the author reveals what the subject really is, later on – a risky technique. So answers to the question of Antwerp’s rise and fall will take a few days longer. 

Black Atlantic: good for you, or simply good?

 

This is a review of the Fitzwilliam Museum exhibition “Black Atlantic: Power People Resistance”, viewed in October 2023.  

First, it’s absolutely essential that museums explore the origins of their funding. Much of the Fitzwilliam collection was acquired by money from the profits of slavery, clearly. This exhibition, Black Atlantic, starts from that point and, I assume, sets out to display what it has discovered, visually. 

As you might imagine, there are some real triumphs of detection. These include a bell, displayed in St Catherine’s College until recently, when it was discovered that the bell, dating from 1772, had been used in a slave plantation in what is today Guyana. 

The exhibition noted the change in depiction of black faces from before and after around 1700, when slavery became widespread. Before, black people were often recognisable, with an identity; later, under slavery, they became anonymous. But is this entirely true? It’s a thesis that cries out to be examined visually - perhaps in an exhibition dedicated to that one topic. There isn’t enough in this exhibition to prove (or disprove) this claim. 

Here was the problem. The exhibition was like a scattergun, covering far too many areas to look at any one of them in satisfying detail. There is no question of the validity of the topic of Black Atlantic, but was that exactly the subject? As I walked around the exhibition, I became increasingly confused: there is no way to cover all the potential exhibition themes in one show. In just three rooms, the range included:

• Studies by Keith Piper of black masculinity and relating to his father in the 1980s. The link seems to have been that Piper used the iconic depiction of slaves in a ship in one of the 14 images – very tenuous.
• A brief attempt to show objects created by the indigenous peoples (referred to in the catalogue with a capital “I”) of the Caribbean. There was one map and a few items, but this theme abruptly disappeared.
• Historic scientific instruments, including a sextant and a chronometer. The link is that such instruments enabled slavery to take place – which means you could include (by the same argument) ships, the navy, the history of navigation – the list is endless. It’s a similar situation with trying to define ESG  companies: do we discount companies that, say, extract oil, or do we discount companies that provide tools that can be used for extracting oil? Where do we stop?
• Two classical sculptures revealing implied depictions of slavery, one Greek, one Roman.
• Seven large-scale reproductions of rare plants and birds. The link was that these specimens had been gathered by black slaves for the white artist to draw from. The point is taken, but you can’t help looking at the exquisitely drawn plants and animals, not how they were collected. There is a tension between the quality of the artwork and the caption.
• A few objects from the Caribbean, because that is where Fitzwilliam made his money, but not a very thorough or detailed history of the region or survey of its indigenous art.
• One picture, by Gerrit Dou, is included simply because it was owned in the past by people involved with slavery, including Fitzwilliam himself. The picture, The Schoolmaster, has no connection with slavery. One picture by Rembrandt (or his studio) is included because it is painted on wood from South America.
• There are pictures of sea battles in the 17^th century between the Dutch Republic and England.
• The exhibition include gold weights from the Akan culture of sub-Saharan West Africa. 

You can see this is enough for several exhibitions, and putting them all together simply creates indigestion. But there were more fundamental problems with the exhibition.

Limitations of the exhibition

• Interpretation replaces assessment. Instead of being told to look at the objects, we are being told what the interpretation of the work is. Proselyting, pedagogical captions take the place of appraisal. Imagination replaces interpretation – the black servant in a portrait by William Dobson is described as suggesting “a deference he may well not have felt” – but it’s not visible in the painting itself.
• Several pictures by Barbara Walker, based on her reimagination of existing works including a black person – she shows the black character in full, with the other people only in outline. Unfortunately, in the exhibition we are not shown the original, so we have no way of comparing. In the catalogue, we see the originals, reproduced at tiny scale. Is this helpful?
• Similarly, Alberta Whittle’s work in response to 16th-century engravings does not include the original engravings, not even in the catalogue. No doubt the originals could be found via the Internet, but what is the point of an exhibition that leaves you to work everything out for yourself?
• Difficult to know where to stop when you identify not just human slavery, but evidence of white domination in, for example, searching for specimens for natural historians, or the wood used to make furniture, or the navigation instruments to enable slave ships to sail. It becomes difficult to draw the line.
• One orthodoxy simply replaces another. The history of the peoples of the Caribbean now doesn’t mention the Spanish conquest, which is a bit silly. The artworks by Barbara Walker cleverly show Western paintings that include a black figure, but with only the black figure displayed. This is fine – and Walker’s drawing is tremendously accomplished – but we are not shown the original! The captions refer to the original, so why can’t we those originals, even just as reproductions? 

It felt like this exhibition was the first time the Fitzwilliam had addressed the issue of where its wealth came from, and in an attempt to include all possible themes, the resulting show looked very provisional. It was like a simple search through the entire University collections to see anything with a link to slavery. Or representation of black people. Or indigenous art in Africa and the Caribbean. Or the history of navigation. And so on. 

Is it good for you or is it good?

One challenge faced by exhibitions of this kind Is fundamental. The criterion for display in the Fitzwilliam is quality. Of course, what constitutes quality will vary from one period to another, but you feel the curators strive to show  that every object in the collection is satisfying to look at. Of course, some works are shown because of extraneous circumstances – the subject is of great historical interest, like portraits of Martin Luther, or there is some association with a major event. Some years ago, the British Museum opened a gallery dedicated to the Enlightenment. Having just spent a lot of time reading Diderot, Voltaire, Rousseau, and Montesquieu, I went to the new exhibition with great enthusiasm, only to be disappointed because the objects illustrated did not correspond to my vision. Nor could they, because they were based on what was visually appealing, rather than corresponding with the ideas of Diderot et al.

In this exhibition, there is a constant tension between what is good for you, and what is simply good to look at. The exhibition, in its excitement to communicate a new theme by which to interpret art history, frequently forgets to check what is good to look at, and instead relies on work that they believe is good for you. Keith Piper’s work is an example: I’m sure it’s good for you, but it simply isn’t very good to look at, and it has only marginal relevance to this exhibition. An example of a works that is both good for you and good to look at is the range of exquisitely decorated plates by Jaqueline Bishop (above). 

After the exhibition

Visitors emerge from the exhibition straight into the Fitzwilliam permanent collection, in this case a room of 20th-century works, but only a few of which are of black subjects, a missed opportunity. Nonetheless, there is a recent (loan) portrait of William Gates a stunning example, and hopefully an addition to the Fitzwilliam collection.

What to make of Black Atlantic?

In summary, there is a great theme here, but the execution was insufficiently thought through. Let’s hope the next related exhibition (they promise several more) is more focused, and less wide-ranging. 

Rubens and Women

 

This marvellous exhibition at Dulwich Picture Gallery has one theme, and succeeds brilliantly in conveying that them. Rubens, although classically trained in the classical idiom (from several years in Rome), created his best works from life studies of the female nude, specifically, of his second wife, Helene Fourment. 

The evidence for this is carefully marshalled, but is most visible in some of the  small-scale drawings in the show, which are compared to a life-size classical sculpture, a Crouching Venus, from the second century CE.

The Crouching Venus clearly served as a reference for many works by the painter – you can see more than one example in the exhibition of the same pose. For example, here is a drawing of Venus nursing Cupids, from 1616:

Yet there is one major difference between the two female bodies. It is clear by comparing these two works that, while Rubens used classical poses as a model, he tempered his classical style by reference to the human body. The key difference is that the Crouching Venus has no folds of flesh; this is an idealised nude, with a kind of abstracted body and face. Helpfully, if perhaps a little voyeuristically, the exhibition provides two mirrors so you can observe the Crouching Venus from more than one angle. In contrast, what brings the Rubens drawing to life is the sense of immediacy, of actuality, despite the pose being classical and the woman’s body conforming more to the classical shape than the present-day ideal. 

There are several examples in the exhibition of this unique synthesis of classical and observation. So vivid is the observation that at times the ostensible subject is entirely lost in the figure being painted, as in the Hagar in the Desert, featuring what appears to be a portrait of Helene Fourment in a stunning blue dress. There is not the slightest sign of her being uncomfortable in her desert surroundings: she looks to be on an outing in her Sunday best:

An even more extreme example of the conflict between subject and model is a crazy depiction of Judith with the head of Holofernes, from 1616 (not in the exhibition, but in the catalogue). Judith looks so fetching, and so pleased with herself, you have to look twice to notice she is holding the head she has just chopped off.

Of course, it is well known that Rubens was a sensual painter – you half expected the famous portrait of Helene Fourment wearing nothing but a fur coat, but the exhibition theme was clearly established without this painting. What is conveyed here is that even in the religious works, there is a sense of life, of the characters jumping out from the picture, to engage with you. 

To conclude, there are two examples of just how skilled Rubens was as a painter. One is a copy by Rubens of the figure of Night by Michelangelo. 

Of course, in the classical tradition of art, painters learned by copying, but it seems very unlikely this Michelangelo was modelled from life. If Michelangelo used a model at all, it looks like he used a male model, and added token breasts to it. Rubens could paint women, but clearly Michelangelo could not (at least, not without looking at them). 

The final indicator of Rubens’ talent came unexpectedly after leaving the exhibition. In the permanent collection at Dulwich, there is a full-size Gainsborough portrait of two young women, that will be a shock for any visitor walking out of the Rubens exhibition: 

Don’t believe that it was the French 19th-century that put an end to the classical depiction of the human form. Here, with Gainsborough, you can see how we have lost the classical tradition. Here is the full horror of the insipid modern body: bodies with no limbs, no curves. So lacking in any substance are the women that it looks like the sheet music one of the women is holding is likely to slip off at any moment; there is nothing to hold it up. Give me the classical yet living world of Rubens any day.

In a Lonely Place (Nicholas Ray, 1950)

 

Gloria Grahame and Humphrey Bogart

What a curious film. Hollywood movies, at least those of the 1950s, were not expected to end without any resolution. In this one, the hero, Dixon Steele, played by Humphrey Bogart, is a screenwriter with a propensity to violence. He is implicated in a murder, which he did not commit, but the suspicion is enough to make him lose his cool at any moment. He falls in love with a neighbour, Laurel Gray (Gloria Grahame), but her love isn’t enough. At the end of the film, he is cleared of the murder … but walks away, into the night.

Why would Bogart make such a film? Even more astonishing, the film was made by his own production company, so he couldn’t claim he accepted an inferior part. The part was written for him. 

My suggestion is that Bogart recognized the new dimension in his acting role, a dimension that is the reason why we watch his films today. As a private detective, Bogart (whether Sam Spade in The Maltese Falcon, or Philip Marlowe in The Big Sleep), played a loner who nonetheless remained principled. He represented, for the audience, a point of integrity in a world full of evil and corruption. Bogart must have felt that this role suited him, and if David Thompson is to be believed, he was far more successful in these roles than he was as an out-and-out villain (with more than 28 films as the baddie). 

So, to Bogart’s credit, he was one of a handful of actors who could play good or evil roles. Cary Grant, for all his accomplishments, was a hopeless villain (and I don’t imagine Charlie Chapin would have made a convincing villain either). In this role, as Dixon Steel, he retains his integrity and principles, but he is so adamant about not following compassion that he appears as a oddball, a misanthrope, as well as a misogynist. In other words, he attempts to carry the private eye role into another area. I assume Bogart’s intention was that we, the viewers, admire Dixon Steele, but we recognize he is difficult to deal with (and presumably nowadays would regard him as a classic case of PTSD). Implicated in a murder, Steele talks to the police captain with an incredible insouciance, comparing himself to the dead woman’s boyfriend, the other suspect: 

Dixon Steele: It was his story against mine, but of course, I told my story better.

Of course, Dick Steele is also a misogynist, but that is what I would expect of a film made in 1950. This is part of the baggage of the time, and not worth complaining about now. Unfortunately, the film shows its age by the abrupt about-turn in Gloria Grahame’s character. For the first couple of scenes, where she and Bogart are flirting, there is a magic in her dialogue and character that is only rivalled by the best screwball comedies. Her lines are assertive and adventurous, but not simply subservient:

Dixon Steele: How can anyone like a face like this? Look at it...

[leans in for a kiss]

Laurel Gray: I said I liked it - I didn't say I wanted to kiss it.

Dixon Steele is the man of truth. He is asked to write a screenplay based on a book he knows h  isn’t going to like, gets a clerk to read the book for him and retell it to him, and then refuses to congratulate himself when the director likes the resulting script. Presumably acceptance of the script means success, income, and reassurance: but not for Dixon Steele, the man of principle, in the middle of Hollywood (the last place you would expect to stick to your principles).

So at the end, when Bogart walks out on the girlfriend, on happiness, on being settled, we respect him, yet we hate him. He is a monster, let’s face it; it would probably be the same if the private detective ever married any of his lady friends. But in the detective films, the question never arises. Part of writing a successful film script is not to include the uncomfortable moments: it kills the fantasy. Elliott Gould, at the end of The Long Goodbye (1974), doesn’t marry anyone either, but we don’t mind or care. Perhaps we feel instinctively that Gould would never strike anyone in uncontrollable anger, while Dixon Steele looks to be perfectly capable of unwarranted violence at any moment. It makes for uncomfortable viewing. 

Network: the impossibility of avoiding light entertainment

 

For much of its two-hour duration, Network (Sidney Lumet, 1976) was very different to usual Hollywood fare. It was genuinely engaged with contemporary society. The opening was riveting, with TV anchor Howard Beale announcing he intends to commit suicide on air. What makes the scene remarkable is that although we are in the control room while the live announcement is taking place, none of the executives notice what is being said. The truth is that they aren’t really bothered about what he is saying. That irony sets the scene for a remarkable, if not quite unique, movie. Once they are told about Beale’s rantings, instead of dismissing him, the executives use him to attempt to improve their ratings. 

There is a tradition of biting satire directed at television in Hollywood, not surprisingly, and other sharply satirical treatments of the media include Sweet Smell of Success (1956). But this film is, for the most part, a sharper satire than most. I say for the most part, because while Howard Beale (a remarkable portrait by Peter Finch) goes steadily mad, the film turns its attention to the most unlikely of love affairs, in the most hackneyed Hollywood style. Max Schumacher, head of the news division, has a torrid affair with another senior executive, Diana Christensen (who looks twenty years younger). The affair is highly unlikely. Christensen is a woman on the make, who would stop at nothing to reach the top  - so why should she bother with a recently sacked veteran who has no continuing influence in the organisation? I couldn’t help thinking that the bitterest irony was her denunciation of news bulletins as just the same as the entertainment shows (“I watched your 6 o’clock news today; it’s straight tabloid.”). That denunciation loses much of its power in a movie that sags alarmingly in the middle to depict the same kind of love affair we had been watching for years: an old man and a young woman, who suddenly seems to lose all her self-possession in the arms of a man who could almost be her father. For several minutes, the lovers, now ex-lovers, denounce each other with grand statements from the pen of Paddy Chayefsky that sound just like every other sitcom on TV. The trick is to create an impressive-sounding statement with an air of finality, which is then followed by an equally impressive-sounding statement, and so on. This is not dialogue, it’s successive one-liners, and it sounds dreadfully stilted. For example: 

Max Schumacher: I’m the man you presumably love. I’m a part of your life. I live here. I’m real. You can’t switch to another station.

Diana Christensen: I was married for four years, and pretended to be happy; and I had six years of analysis, and pretended to be sane.

These remarks are not really part of a conversation. They are set pieces, as shallow as the TV attitudes condemned by the rest of the film. They don’t belong here (see, I’m learning to use the style myself). Network would be an even greater achievement if it had managed not to go soft in the middle.

The Museum formerly known as the Cambridgeshire Folk Museum

 

The collection of traditional Fen objects

Oxford and Cambridge have a similar problem. The university tends to dominate much of the activity and tourism in the city, with the result that the local museum has always suffered. By “local” I mean a museum dedicated to the town rather than to the university. You can appreciate their problems, since visitors to Oxford and Cambridge usually come for the university, however intangible that institution might be (I remember visitors to Oxford asking me where the university was, because you could be in the middle of Oxford and not notice it). 

The Museum of Cambridge has more problems than that of Oxford. First, it has changed its title, if not its remit. It was founded as the Cambridge and County Folk Museum in 1936. At some point in the last few years it changed its name to the present Museum of Cambridge. This is a misnomer, because it covers Cambridgeshire as well as Cambridge. 

The Museum is situated in an historic inn, which partly dates back to the 16th century. However, nobody would claim the building is highly significant. The collection, of around 30,000 objects, isn’t highly significant either. When I visited the Museum last weekend, I didn’t see one object that would I would describe as unmissable. 

The Museum has a series of small rooms, covering a smattering of subjects from Cambridge and the county. One room is devoted to brewing. One room contains objects relating to the Fens. One room has old domestic utensils. In other words, it is similar to several other museums within a 75-mile radius. 

The "I used to have one of those in my house" type of collection

The problem with a museum that has nothing distinctive is that there is no real reason for visiting it. A few years ago, the Museum was in the headlines because it was threatened with closure, something that seems to have been averted by appointing new trustees. Yet for me the fundamental questions remain. Both times I’ve visited the Museum I would be hard pressed to say there was anything in it worth saving. What is the scope of the Museum? it doesn’t really attempt to cover the history of anything. There are some scraps from Cambridge history, but no attempt at explanation or interpretation. There are even some old oars, from Cambridge college rowing teams; oars on the walls represent a low point for the individual colleges, and what they are doing in a museum which covers everything outside the university is beyond my imagination. Of all the things to collect and display, university memorabilia should be low on the agenda.

I was fortunate to be shown round the Museum by the chair of the trustees, Roger Lilley. His enthusiasm and knowledge was infectious, and he mentioned the impressive online project Connecting Cambridge, which aims to collect oral histories at a very local level.

But despite Roger’s enthusiasm, my doubts about the museum remain. In a city full of attractions like Cambridge, a collection needs to have a distinct identity. I can find out about the Fens from Wisbech, Ely, and King’s Lynn museums. I can find old domestic appliances in any number of old houses and collections. There is no compelling reason to visit this museum: it lacks a big idea. Even Mildenhall Museum, which has none of the Mildenhall Treasure on show (all the originals are in the British Museum), still makes an attempt to explain why Mildenhall is famous by the use of replicas and information boards. There are very few information boards here.

The Museum could, like the Pitt Rivers in Oxford, emphasise its folk connections. There are a (very) few objects linked to witchcraft and folklore. The Museum could try to show the history of Cambridge in a meaningful way, with references to prominent local employers such as Pye, ARM, Sinclair, and Chivers (of Histon). The Museum could attempt the difficult feat of a collection relating to Cambridgeshire, which covers both rolling chalk scenery (in the south) and the Fens (in the north): two very different habitats and histories. The University-managed Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology currently has an excellent exhibition relating to the archaeology of Cambridgeshire.

Saddest of all, there is no longer a café. The first time I visited, there was a very sweet café with old cups and saucers, run by lovely old dears. This time, the café was firmly closed. 

Thousands of people must walk past the Museum every day on their way around Cambridge, yet I can’t in all honesty recommend that they stop for a visit to the institution still known to most locals as the Folk Museum. Better to go to a collection with a single theme, such as the David Parr House. My (admittedly personal) dream would be a museum dedicated to the history and growth of the town of Cambridge. Not from the point of view of one college, but explaining how the Roman settlement was located here, why the town missed out on the industrial growth that Oxford experienced in the 20th century, but how Cambridge has now become a powerhouse of biomedical research and IT start-ups. That is a remarkable story: from Sinclair Research, to the BBC Micro, to the mighty ARM. That, for me, would be a distinctive theme for a museum.  

North by Northwest (1959)

 

North by Northwest (1959) is regularly included as one of the great films of Alfred Hitchcock. Given the detailed critical appraisal handed to Vertigo and Rear Window, I expected something far more dark than this. Instead, I noticed the jokes (including the hospital patient whose room Grant accidentally enters, and who immediately cries out "Don't go!") 

My immediate motivation for watching this film (I had seen it before, but so long ago that I had forgotten it) was to explore the role of Cary Grant. David Thompson recently reviewed two biographies of Grant, and how both of them attempted to get to the bottom of Grant’s magic. I read with fascination about how Grant’s mother was incarcerated in an asylum for over 20 years, with what horrific effect for him I can hardly imagine. I then watched a documentary, Becoming Cary Grant, by Mark Kidel, which revealed some more interesting facts – but at the same time clothed this documentary in an annoying cod-psychoanalytic tone that was more simplistic than Hollwood in the 40s and 50s, suggesting that LSD gave Grant some insight he had been lacking, and had several shots of a stand-in playing Grant on the couch with his analyst. 

At this point, I thought, let’s go back to Grant himself. Let’s see again one of his  quintessential performances. North by Northwest  is seen as one of Grant’s best performances. After watching the film, read the relevant section of Hitchcock by Truffaut, Thompson on North by Northwest, as well as Robin Wood  (Hitchcock’s Films, 1965).  Armed with all this background, what did I make of it?

This is indeed, as Thompson claims, more in the tradition of the Hollywood screwball comedy than a thriller. Just as Jacques Lourcelles in the Laffont Encyclopedia of Cinema states, the film is a masterclass in presenting life-threatening danger right alongside humour, much of it self-deprecating, constantly setting up suspense and then piercing it with humour, often suggesting that Grant is not the hero he would like to be. 

2.      Wood compares North by Northwest with Goldfinger, and claims that NBN is a greater film because of its moral stance. That sounds like someone who attended lectures by Leavis (as Wood did), but I don’t think it is a valid distinction between the figure of James Bond and Roger O. Thornhill (the character played by Grant). James Bond films never include a role for James Bond’s mother. If there is a moral progress in this film, you could say it is moral progress shared by many other knockabout comedies – and the progress is in fact questionable (see below).

3.      For me, on seeing the film a second time, the least effective scenes were the most famous: the attack by a crop-dusting plane, and the final sequence on Mount Rushmore. Why were these scenes so ineffective? Partly because Grant, like Bond, cannot die. His persona does not include dying. But perhaps more fundamentally, these are the only two scences in the film where the humour, so well linked by Hitchcock, is less apparent. For a moment, Hitchcock concentrates on the action, and pure action is not his strongpoint.

4.      Nor is heroic action Grant’s strongpoint. Grant is great at one-liners, looks wonderful in a suit, but starts to lose his charisma when in a situation of true jeopardy. Insecurity, yes, self-deprecation, yes, but expressing fear, or looking convincing in a stage fight is not really what he does.

5.      In Wood’s view, Grant through the film moves towards a “proper” relationship with women: from being married twice (he states they both divorced him) to accepting a “mature” love affair. The problem with this view is that Eva Marie Saint (Eve Kendall) represents so many conflicting viewpoints at the same time in the film. She is the sexy, inviting woman on the train; the cold and calculating temptress who will spend the night with Grant just so she can send him to a certain death in the interest of her mission; but the implications of these attitudes leave the scriptwriter with too many loose ends. You can’t commit your life to someone who sent you to your death a couple of scenes ago.

There are also questions about Eve Kendall’s morality. How did she become the mistress of a spy? This predates her recruitment by the US authorities, so presumably it was a conscious decision, but she describes it flippantly as

“I had a spare evening, so I decided to fall in love”? Such talk worked when flirting with Grant, but makes her judgement rather suspect when she falls for one of the most evil people on the planet. With such knowledge, could Grant ever really be happy? Would he not suspect her to the end of his days?

6.      And what about Leo Carroll, usually the figure of authority in so many English films, stating in his very appearance that he is willing to let Grant go to his death in the interest of security? Why, as Grant points out, is he willing to prostitute Eve Kendall for the same end? Doesn’t this suggest a lack of morality, rather than a moral focus?

7.       And why doesn’t anyone notice that Martin Landau is depicted as the utterly villainous homosexual, who knows things because of his “womanly intuition”? Such a line would be excised from any film made today.

No, this film does not have moral gravity, at least, no more than many screwball comedies. The “secrets” are so vague we are never told what they are. The villains are stagy. No, for me, NBN remains memorable as (a) the US remake of The 39 Steps, and none the worse for that.  I would say the achievement of the film is Grant moving from shallow and irresponsible (and dishonest) to becoming responsible, but without losing his self-deprecating humour. He is the man you most want to go to bed with – and there would be plenty of laughs along the way.  

 One final comment in its favour: Grant made this film when he was 55? Yet Hitchcock managed the great feat of making Grant look at least ten years younger, and still sexually alluring. A few years later, in Charade (1963), he looked like an OAP in the wrong place alongside a young heroine. Here, he succeeds brilliantly. Perhaps that is the mark of a great director: he maintained the image of Grant as the laid-back, wise-cracking man we would all like to be (even if we are all held back, like Thornhill, by our mothers).