Mentally Casting Barney Snaith for "The Blue Castle " Movie of the Mind...

The most amazing, grail-like fictional casting discovery ever has been made.  All passionate readers have at one time or another attempted to find a real-life parallel to the characters they so love to read about.  Casting a favourite book in one's imagination is a wonderful pastime.  Some BBC miniseries and Hollywood adaptations do a great job of matching, some actors seem destined to bring classic characters to life (I mentally cast Jack Davenport as several Georgette Heyer heroes); but finding an actor to play Barney Snaith of L.M. Montgomery’s The Blue Castle, possibly my favourite fictional leading man, eluded me for years.

I felt that some actors captured  the essence of Barney and Eric Stoltz was a possible contender for years ( the right smile, the right hair):

British actors Damien Lewis  and Steven Mackintosh were lesser possibilities:

....Kevin McKidd had the right colouring, too:

....and I sort of want to give a shout-out to Benedict Cumberbatch who probably would be up to snuff as well...

But fair, ginger-haired Barney seemed doomed to evade imaginary casting forever.  I just couldn't pinpoint him and no one seemed right.

Casting Barney Snaith of The Blue Castle is something, in my world, that is well over a decade in the making.  He is the absolute GRAIL of fictional casting and if you find the perfect Barney, well, the imaginative world is your proverbial oyster. 

Shall we spend a few moments recalling Barney?  It’s such an agreeable pastime:

The narrator describes him in wily fashion in the very opening paragraphs of the book….even without our knowing that the description meted out matches Valancy’s soon-to-be leading man. As the dawn arises on Valancy’s 29th birthday, we learn who has pre-occupied her mind. Conveniently replacing the physical characteristics of her imaginative Prince as she grows older, the narrator informs: "recently--very recently--her hero had had reddish, tawny hair, a twisted smile and a mysterious past."

Soon after this dream-like incarnation Barney is viewed through Valancy's furtive glances in downtown Deerwood as she runs errands:

"This was only the second time she had ever seen the notorious Barney Snaith[...] He had been crawling out from under his car then, too, and he had given her a cheerful grin as she went by--a little, whimsical grin that gave him the look of an amused gnome.He didn't look bad--she didn't believe he was bad, in spite of the wild yarns that were always being told of him[...]  But still Valancy didn't believe he was bad.  Nobody with a smile like that could be bad, no matter what he had done."

Barney's smile and his look of an amused gnome are a consistent part of his allure and charm for Valancy and he soon manifests himself in her ever important dream world:

“It was that night the Prince of the Blue Castle changed from a

being of grim jaw and hair with a dash of premature grey to a

rakish individual with overlong, tawny hair, dashed with red, dark-

brown eyes, and ears that stuck out just enough to give him an

alert look but not enough to be called flying jibs.  But he still

retained something a little grim about the jaw.”

 She envies him his freedom and his beguiling manner and she admits at a rigid family dinner that she has studied him closely: both upfront and, as we know from her recalling of her Blue Castle dream sprees, in her imaginative consciousness: "I've seen him twice and I looked at him closely," said Valancy composedly.  "I thought his face the most interesting one I ever

saw."

Barney’s physical presence is intrinsically linked to his enigma. Not only is he (with the exceptions of Dean Priest and, to lesser extent, Andrew Stuart) Montgomery’s most dimensional hero, his mysterious past recalls the Byronic and Brontean mystique so prevalent in her novels. Though Valancy’s initial encounters with Barney allow her slight, old-maidenly, shy glances, when she leaves Deerwood for Roaring Abel’s and meets him more consistently as he visits Cissy Gay and even begins an odd friendship with her, she is given further opportunity to notice him:

“His eyes, which she had always thought brown, now seen close, were

deep violet--translucent and intense.  Neither of his eyebrows

looked like the other.  He was thin--too thin--she wished she could

feed him up a bit--she wished she could sew the buttons on his

coat--and make him cut his hair--and shave every day.  There was

SOMETHING in his face--one hardly knew what it was.  Tiredness?

Sadness?  Disillusionment?  He had dimples in his thin cheeks when

he smiled.  All these thoughts flashed through Valancy's mind in

that one moment while his eyes looked into hers.”

That’s right, he had dimples…. A favourite physical mark of Montgomery’s.

So, we’ve covered Barney physically.  Interestingly, other Montgomery heroes (such as Gilbert Blythe and Teddy Kent of Anne of Green Gables and Emily of New Moon respectively) are given far less physical description. Instead, Montgomery sketches them in outline—relying on her readers to colour in their own attributes and physical characteristics.  You can make Gil whatever hero you want him to be, you can colour Teddy with the paintbrush that so tickles your imaginative fancy. Barney, on the other hand (as well as Dean Priest, as a relative if somewhat more cynical comparison), is clearly outlined for you.  While she gives you a snapshot of his physical presence from the very beginning, it is alternatively his past that she expects you to play with until the “reveal” at the end which brushstrokes all of his “missing” information.

So, when mentally casting Barney Snaith, the physical composite is, of course,  a great place to start.  But, as Barney is a dimensional and complicated character, his strong, enticing personality, lackadaisical air, sense of nature and aesthetic pleasure, knack for speaking in all of the languages of the world, and dark past feeding his prototype as Harlequin Hero Extraordinaire is also uber-important.

That’s why  blogger Joni’s mental inspiration for Barney is quite pitch-perfect.

In the comments section of a blog post focusing on (the obviously similar) Edward Rochester, she scribbled:

“BUT since you mentioned LMM, I just thought I'd throw this out there: Doesn't Toby Stephens look an awful lot like Barney Snaith from 'The Blue Castle'?” ….”My sister and I have been fantasy-casting 'TBC' for YEARS now. We haven't found a suitable Valancy and maybe never will (everyone in Hollywood is too pretty). But TS circa 'Tenant of Wildfell Hall' is DEAD ON.”

 Say wha.....? But, I know Toby Stephens. How could I have not seen Barney in him?

  

Toby Stephens is familiar to many like me who hanker after all things British. Think Cambridge Spies, the A&E Great Gatsby (he was a fab Jay Gatsby) Tenant of Wildfell Hall and even an episode of Sharpe and that sad, sad third season of Robin Hood.  But, the image of Toby that most often springs to mind is as his turn as Rochester: a hulking, brooding, dark-haired gentleman whose virility and mischievous, miscreant smile overtakes many of his scenes opposite Ruth Wilson’s Jane Eyre. As I took the time to go back, to recognize  (as I often forget with that pre-possessing Rochester image in mind) that Stephens’ natural colouring is akin to Barney’s and that he indeed has a whimsical smile, a fresh, athletic frame and a mischievous glint in his light eyes, I saw more and more what Joni and her sister did.

Revisiting the 2006 miniseries of Jane Eyre, I read moments of John Foster (John Foster, to those uninitiated with The Blue Castle, is an author who serves a very large role in Valancy and Barney’s romantic development): Rochester and Jane chase dragonflies; they look into nature books in Rochester’s glorious library.  The easy rapport that Rochester shares with Jane, like the preternatural kinship and automatic friendship between Barney and Valancy also offered a serene comparative light.

This seems like a loquacious article when extolling the possible screen-like compatibility of an actor who will probably never grace the screen in our imagined role; but darnit! I have looked for Barney for an age and Joni (whomever she is) is currently my hero for finding him.

Here's some Barney in our friend Toby Stephens. Montgomery writes that Barney had "over-long, tawny hair" in an age when men were known to wear their hair closely cut (here is a photo of a typical 1920s male hairstyle).  Barney's tawny, reddish hair is interesting because he is the only masculine character of her novels to sport a similar shade gifted to her first and  most memorable female heroine, Anne Shirley. [I am not including the next generation of Shirley-Blythes like Walter and Jem: because they are peripheral and not leading men, per se. I like Walter as much as you do.)

Montgomery mentions that Barney often fails to shave (preluding his marriage to Valancy where immediately thereafter he is shown to shave every day).  This BBC interview with Toby Stephens recalls this look.


Finally, Barney is a bit of a rakish fellow and, as such, featuring in an early example of Canadian romance, would sport a roguish grin.  Observe this picture:

I throw this to you:

-What fictional character seems elusive to you when it comes to casting?

-Are you an L.M. Montgomery fan? Who would you cast as Barney? Dean Priest? (we're forgetting that gawdawful Emily of New Moon series from the CBC) Andrew Stuart? 

Books I Wouldn't Usually Read VOL I: From This Moment On by Shania Twain

In this, the first edition of Books I Wouldn't Usually Read, I speak to From This Moment On, Shania Twain's autobiography which I (score!) borrowed from the Toronto Public Library

Oh Shania Twain: you're like Canada's Cinderella!

I must confess to having never been a fan of her music; but having been appreciative of her background and the fact that she seemingly remembers her roots.

Truth be told, you aren't going to pick up this autobiography for earth-shattering statements on the state of the world; nor sparkling of literary merit. However, if you, like I, are beguiled by human interest pieces that frame a rags-to-riches journey, then this book is worth a go.

Shania blatantly speaks to the severe poverty her family endured during her formative years. Indeed, this experience fills half of the book ( which is largely devoted to her family, her upbringing and her memories of coldness and malnutrition). The other half is devoted to her role in the music industry and her climb to incredible success. I was more attuned to the steps that led her to the top.

Shania is at her strongest when writing about childhood memories like playing with blades of grass, walking home from school with her siblings in the harsh Canadian winter, or singing for relatives at holidays. Her shards of memory paint a sharp contrast between the life she led as a youngster (descriptions include a maggot-invested basement carpet and her father making mustard sandwiches on account of their being nothing else for the packed school lunches) and the life she leads as one of the most successful recording artists in the world. The sublimely humane recollections of the past help ground her successful future. Though at the opposite end of the social spectrum, her upbringing and the tragic early death of her parents informs even the latter part of her story.

For those hoping that her autobiography will colour in the blanks of her well-publicized divorce and personal love life, I found that Twain wisely stayed minimal when speaking to the circumstances surrounding the break-up of her marriage. We all know that I am not a celebrity gossip girl and one of the greatest attributes of Twain's tale is that it speaks largely to human experience and emotion and doesn't prey as heftily on celebrity.

The book did not contribute to my opinion of Shania Twain as an artist and I must say I am as disinterested in her creative output musically as before. However, like all Canadians, I recognize her contribution to our presence on a national front and as such respect her as an individual--- more so now that I have heard first-hand some of the travails she overcome to fulfill her lifelong passion.

Moment of Zen

Subway Reads with Romantic Plots and Sprinklings of Magic...

The Love Goddess' Cooking School by Melissa Senate

I must confess that I hunted this book down because Sarah Addison Allen's books have helped me develop at a taste for foodie literature enhanced with magic. Unfortunately, what Allen excels at, Senate never finds a niche for. I didn't quite "buy" the central relationship of the story and the aforementioned magic seemed forced. I credit Senate on her well-researched and developed world of Blue Crab Island and on the meticulous research that must have aided the depth of the Italian American experience Holly's grandmother writes of in her journal. The several recipes scattered throughout the book add a flavour of authenticity.

Yes, lacking the spark of Allen's books and of Joanne Harris's; but a good go-between and a pleasant way to steal away for a few hours.

The Book of Tomorrows by Cecilia Ahern

My brother's gorgeous Irish fiancee is from Cork and so I have a bit of a soft spot for literature set there, including this tale from the popular author of P.S., I Love You ( a far inferior book).

Tamara is a whip-smart, ultra-observent 16 year old narrator and a pleasure to follow: a sassy beguiler who snaps with frank disdain the travails peppering her life. When her father commits suicide as a result of mounting debt, Tamara waves goodbye to the glorious world she knew of posh school friends, limitless iced frapps at Starbucks and a bottomless well of money and travel. Her semi-catatonic mother accompanies her to Aunt Rosaleen and Uncle Arthur's: a small, shifty and smothering cottage out in the middle of rural-nowhere.

Here, Tamara tries to exist as her favourite expensive shampoo dwindles down to its last bottle and her friends are miles away. A stroke of fate brings Marcus, the local mobile librarian, across her path and with him a blank book whose pages fill revealing the events of the next day before Tamara has opportunity to live them...

I enjoyed the magic-carpet ride herein and pleasantly had no idea where the journey would take me.

Tamara's silent frustration as the world was whipped from under her feet was tragic to behold and Ahern paints a moving, starkly realistic portrayal of teen grief underneath a canopy of tinted magic.

Sourcebooks Blog Tour: Bath Tangle (and Happy Birthday to Georgette Heyer)

Georgette Heyer was designed for you if….

…it’s raining and you have the “mean reds”

…you want to steal into a land of gossamer and lace where men wear top hats and breeches

…you can taste the salt smell of the Bath waters while dreaming of a high tea at a nearby shop (perhaps stealing in for a dry spell after a stint in the rain)

…you miss the days when men were men and kissed ladies’ hands and knew the rigmarole of whist games and quadrilles

…you know the difference between a morning dress and a day dress

…you want to breakfast late and call the house staff by their surnames

…you think that “felicity” and “thither” really are the greatest words in the dictionary

…if, like me, you have read your Jane Austen canon to shreds since you began at the tender age of 14.

Georgette Heyer is pure, sparkly, cupcake-iced joy. Her heroines are winsome and beguiling, her heroes have just enough rogue to be tamed by the careful attention and craftily-won heart of a fair maiden. The “drawing room” manners and social graces of the “ton” whirl in a maze of winding, twining roads making the obstacles securing an inevitable happy ending worth the trip to the altar. Celebrating Georgette Heyer’s Birthday ( today) is a good excuse to spend the day perusing through Sourcebooks’ exceptional catalogue (they have done an incredible job at making her beloved titles easily accessible for the hungry masses)

Take Bath Tangle….

{italicized from the publisher}:

A Delightful Tangle of Affairs…The Earl of Spenborough had always been noted for his eccentricity. Leaving a widow younger than his own daughter Serena was one thing, but leaving his fortune to the trusteeship of the Marquis of Rotherham – the one man the same daughter had jilted – was quite another.When Serena and her lovely young stepmother Fanny decide to move to Bath, Serena makes an odd new friend and discovers an old love. Before long, they’re all entangled in a clutter of marriage and manners the likes of which even Regency Bath has rarely seen.

Serena is a lovely heroine: spirited and sly and smart and, like the best Heyer heroines, unwilling to be rescued by a dashing gent; rather willing to be accepting of his offer on her own terms and in her own way. A feisty red head with a temper to boot, she is near bested by a reduced family circumstance that throws her in the path of a suitor she jilted years before. Will he enjoy sweet revenge on her behalf …and to her utter ruin? Or does the spark of a first love still linger like an ember beneath flashes of anger, duels of wit and conversation that will keep readers giggling?

If you liked Persuasion, then Bath Tangle will delight you.

Heyer is indubitably the best Regency writer since Austen and in sea of Austen-inspired prequels, updates, sequels, epistolary fiction, diaries, graphic novels, parodies, pastiches and horror stories, she will rescue you. She is in a class of her own. What differentiates her from the usual Austenitis continually sweeping the publishing world and fulfilling our insatiable craving for more, is her verisimilitude, understanding of Regency culture, feels for dialogue and character and fresh plots and romances. She doesn’t hype on the laurels of Jane Austen; nor does she create new stories for characters already developed. Rather, she springboards from a popular motif and makes it her own. She is renowned as one of the most timeless Historical novelists of any age and you must, must read her. You must. It’s the law.

+To celebrate Georgette Heyer's birthday, make sure you visit Austenprose --where they are celebrating with a giveaway!

+Jane Austen's World featured a scintillating look at the Many Faces of Georgette Heyer

+Sourcebooks is celebrating Heyer's 109th by offering e-books at as little as 1.99. Honestly, they are so worth it. Buy all your Heyer here. Consider my two favourites, Venetia and Black Sheep alongside a purchase of Bath Tangle

My thanks to Sourcebooks for making her titles widely available and for sending me the copy of Bath Tangle to add to my happily growing Heyer collection.

Eve's Daughters by Lynn Austin

To say that I loved Eve's Daughters would be an understatement. I drank in Eve's Daughters, turned each page with a contented sigh and was absolutely depressed when the final chapter rounded the bend.

Again, Lynn Austin is at top form crafting a multi-generational story involving four generations of women and their trials and triumphs: the men they loved, the mistakes they made, the eponymous “curse” that leads them to believe that one darkly hidden past mistake has ripples and ramifications brimming into the past and present.

The novel begins in 1980 with 80 year old Emma packing her belongings to move to a nursing home. Her daughter Grace and her grand-daughter Suzanne are nearby to help excavate the past. Suzanne is currently going through the first inklings of a divorce and Grace is still trying to reconcile with her childhood and discover why her father never wanted her and disappeared when she was quite young.

As is prevalent thematically in all of Austin's novels, the conceptualization of a woman's role is explored here: as Emma's mother is recalled and her migration from Germany to Pennsylvania shapes Emma's early life. Emma's formative years are traced against the backdrop of the years preluding the First War. As always, Austin perfectly captures the historical period and paints such a life-like canvas you get swept into the past and into the lives of her characters. This is not to mention the absolute perfection in which she rounds out a multi-dimensional cast of supporting characters: each springing life-like from the page and embodying the elements of grace, redemption, mistakes and forgiveness that form the whole of the tale.

The story is told in fractured narrative, often captapulting the reader back to the present and then stirring the past again: through Emma's great secret, Grace's lifelong search for a father and Suzanne's inability to reconcile her spirited nature with the confines of her mother's domestic example.

Christianity plays a role; but one sewn in the fabric of the tale and not blatantly at the front. It is implied and characterized and emblemized without ever being "preachy" Like most of Austin's novels, one need not be Christian to appreciate the wiles of her craft and the way she plays with you: at one point unravelling just enough of a mystery; while holding back and toying with unobstructed narration. The fill-in-the-blanks portion of each ( sometimes unreliable) narrator keeps the reader attempting to sew together the design of the finished product and to, once and for all, marry the past with the present-- uncovering the one devastating secret that has shaken the family to the core.

As While We're Far Apart features a Jewish protagonist and pairs Judaism with Protestant Christianity ( the wealth of Austin's market); Eve's Daughters does well in respectfully painting the life of the Irish Catholic experience at the beginning to mid 20^th Century. The ultimate hero of the tale ( and a wonderfully realized character ) is Father O'Duggan: a flawed priest whose mistakes never fail to tarnish his witness as a man of Christ in a tortured world.

This is just exceptional writing: Christian or not, and reaffirms why Austin remains one of my favourite living writers: She catches you in all of the right places, makes every sentence seem relevant and current to each and every situation and validates your existence as a woman.

She's a strong, strong writer and those who have not dipped into her incredibly strong backlist ( I have yet to read a mediocre Austin novel ) are really, really, missing out.

Julia's Chocolates by Cathy Lamb

Julia's Chocolates is major estrogen-lit. In the tradition of The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood, the works of Sarah Addison Allen (without the touch of magic), and hinting at Where the Heart Is by Billie Letts, Julia's Chocolates asserts feminine power to the max.

Every woman who attends the delightfully quirky Aunt Lydia's Psychic Nights (Which are usually coupled with an outpouring of love to a part of female anatomy), celebrates the lusty, wonderful and magical connection they have with each other, their domestic spheres and their winsome natures.

From abuse victims to minister's wives cajoled by the restrictive boundaries of the church, this novel revolves around women: finding themselves, tweaking their relationships, grabbing their reigns and forging their paths.

There is a lot of abuse here: from physical to violent and the over-powering nature of it on each woman's life seems to border on the melodramatic. Nonetheless, Lamb presents her material in a visceral, stark and eye-opening manner that only makes the triumphs of her women over the travails rendered by their situations more potent.

I really enjoyed how Julia developed. Her first-person narrative was welcome and her slow and sure trust of her new community unravelled comfortably like a slight, unfurling ball of yarn.

This is heavy on the tragedy; but also heavy on the light.

It is certainly a page-turner and those with a hankering for a happy ending will find plenty abound in this sweet and unique tale. One might argue that in a novel that presents abuse so bluntly and so realistically, the endless happy endings clash in unrealism. However, as readers, we want our novels to be neatly sewn and Lamb caters to this request.

A healthy dose of Chicklit for those who prefer the power of community and realistic romance; rather than heels, Prada, cosmos and cityscapes.

Ruth and Rachel's Epic TCM programming line-up

Ruth (a long-time online correspondent of mine and excellent blogger!) and I have spent a great deal of time this summer talking classic movies. This week, we decided to play "guest-programmer" and pick the five films we would feature (pre-1965) if Robert Osborne ever gave us the chance to introduce and feature them on Turner Classic Movies

The results of this discussion are these STELLAR film line-ups (TCM, we're waiting by the phone). First up, Ruth's picks ( I haven't seen them all yet and want to go watch them all, in a row, right now!)

Her Cardboard Lover (1942) – In her final film appearance, Norma Shearer shines opposite a young, energetic, and boyishly charming Robert Taylor. Taylor is the broke songwriter intent on winning socialite Shearer’s affections, while she’s determined to keep him at arm’s length, using him as a "human shield" against the attentions of a debonair George Sanders. Taylor is at his maddening, dashing, adorable best in this film, and reveals a surprising affinity for screwball comedy.

Foreign Affair (1948) – Classic Billy Wilder comedy featuring a standout performance by Jean Arthur as a prim and proper Congresswoman tasked with assessing the morale of American troops stationed in occupied Berlin. A love triangle develops between Arthur, a handsome army captain played by John Lund, and Marlene Dietrich as a sensuous German singer with a dangerous past. Hilarious misunderstandings ensure, and watching Arthur gradually unravel as she falls for Lund is a delight.

My Cousin Rachel (1953) – Richard Burton is at his handsome and youthful best in this absorbing story of obsession and what happens when the line between perception and reality becomes irrevocably blurred. Olivia de Havilland is gorgeous and enigmatic as the woman who comes to captivate Burton’s soul. Moody, suspenseful, and atmospheric, with gorgeous mid-19th century costumes, My Cousin Rachel is not to be missed for fans of Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca.

A Hole in the Head (1959) – Charming Frank Capra vehicle features Frank Sinatra as a well-intentioned single father who struggles to balance his high-flying schemes of striking it rich with the responsibilities that come with raising a young son. Eleanor Parker is lovely as the lonely widow Sinatra's son Ally hopes will make his father happy, and Edward G. Robinson and Thelma Ritter are terrific as the straight-laced relatives determined to separate father & son. Sinatra and Eddie Hodges will melt your heart as father and son, especially during their performance of the Oscar-winning song from which the film takes its name and the moving final scenes.

Midnight Lace (1960) – Doris Day does suspense! Day plays Kit, an heiress and the new bride of Rex Harrison, who can’t get anyone to believe she’s being stalked. Moody and intense, the scenes in the London fog are deliciously atmospheric, and John Gavin is positively swoon-worthy as the one man who wants to help Kit, but as she's driven to the brink of madness, she isn’t sure she can trust.

And now for MY PICKS! (you'll notice that Ruth's picks intelligently featured vintage posters advertising each film; whereas I was all over the LET'S SEE THE ACTORS IN SCREENSHOT" mode! )

Gone with the Wind - brings the Southern Antebellum Era to wonderfully techni-coloured life. The loves and losses of spicy heroine Scarlett O'Hara threaten to eclipse the background canvas of the war between the States while still drawing enough attention and melodrama to evoke comparison to another looming War imminent at the time of the film's inital release. This movie is the epitome of sprawling epic and it releases just enough of the book's enduring magic and touches on just the right notes of Scarlett's on-going ballad to make it one of the greatest examples of novel-to-screen in film history. The film is so well cast that each individual character will forever be associated with its competent onscreen portrayal and thoughts of revision seem incomprehensible.

Mr. Deeds Goes to Town: Surfacely, a charming romantic comedy about a poetic soul misplaced in the big city upon his inheritance of a grand estate. "Pixilated" since birth, Longfellow Deeds' big heart and eccentric demeanour fall prey to the wiles of a newspaper's hunger for exposition while thawing the heart of a journalist whose initial skepticism is replaced by pure inspiration. A gem from Frank Capra: a director who devoted his film career to piecing hope and inspiration out of the crumbled loss of a nation disillusioned by war.

Roman Holiday: from the first moment when Princess Anne ( glitteringly portrayed by endearingly vulnerable Audrey Hepburn in her first major American film role) accidentally slips out of her shoe you know that this Cinderella-story-in-reverse will be luminously executed by Hepburn's incomparable beauty and charm. As Jean Arthur's sceptical journalist in Mr.Deeds Goes to Town hides her identity to weasel a story; so Gregory Peck's Joe Bradley sets out to glean the exposee of the century while class-clashingly falling in love with a princess disuillusioned by her royal obligations. Rome plays as much of a character as the two leads and the cinematography leading both tourists through the maze of the definitive continental city adds to the burgeoning romantic plot.

Pygmalion transplants George Bernard Shaw's comedy of class and manners onto the silver screen. So lasting was the interpretation of the play by Leslie Howard and Dame Wendy Hiller that the controversial ending tweaked to suit a romance-hungry movie-going population would endure until the release of My Fair Lady several years later. British acting is at its finest as a classic piece of theatre is made accessible to audiences everywhere. While it takes the aforementioned liberty with the ending of the tale, the screen adaptations stays true to the tone and subtle humour of the story and Howard is at his best when playing to Henry Higgins' greatest weakness: his inability to recognize that in as much as he has changed flower girl-turned -English gentlewoman Eliza, Eliza has changed him.

Cluny Brown, Ernst Lubitsch's penultimate film, is a equal parts satire and comedy of manners set at an English manor house in the year preluding the Second World War. Charles Boyer is the epitome of rapscallion charm as Adam Belinski: a wily Czech professor in exile for his anti-Hitler sentiments willing to capitalize on the well-meaning (if daft) British anti-war enthusiasts who idolize him. This leads to his stay at Friar's Carmel with a wealthy family who know little about world events other than writing letters to the Times and hearing of Hitler's popular book ( something or other outdoorsy about a camp, or so thinks the Lord of the Manor). While there, he falls head-over-heels in love with another outcast: the adorably zesty domestic maid Cluny Brown. With an imagination worthy of Anne of Green Gables and a penchant to follow her dour Uncle's trade as a plumber, Cluny mirrors Belinski in her seeming inability to meld into the society she is so desperate to find her place in. With a scathing, sweet, whipsmart script and enough double-entendre to send a modern viewer's head spinning, Cluny is only recently being revisited as a classic of the Lubitsh canon.

***

So there you have it - I'd love to hear your thoughts on any of these films, or which five would make up your own "dream" TCM schedule!

TLC Book Tour: Next to Love by Ellen Feldman

Next to Love by Ellen Feldman is a gripping tale of women affected by the travesties--- on the home front and beyond--- during the years of and the years following the American involvement in the Second World War.

Babe, Grace and Millie are three very different childhood friends whose bond is sewn even tighter due to their collective experience: learning of loss, hardship and heartache when the men they love are expected to do their duty overseas. The novel weaves mainly between the three perspectives of these women; but sometimes offers a glimpse into the point of view of their husbands, boyfriends, and (very occasionally) their children.

Interspersed with letters from the front line and a pitch-perfect historical sense, readers will be easily engrossed in the wonderfully realized world of these very different women.

I was immediately captivated by the narrative structure of the book and found myself turning pages rather quickly. The details about Babe, Grace and Millie’s everyday work and home lives are told with such historical conviction you feel you are peeking through a window to observe their every- day experience.

I was most captivated by the love story between Claude and Babe. Sensitive Claude never recovers from his time in combat and Feldman’s stark portrayal of a man who has undergone the shock and treachery of the battlefield is heartbreaking. This is made even more so when coupled with a traumatic experience which befalls his wife Babe while she is still at home. The novel takes us beyond WWII and into the 1950s and 60s--- decades where America’s promise was emblemized in new housing, urban planning and differing ways of extending credit. The prosperity of these years clashes with the opening chapters of loss. One of the most effective moments of the book occurs with Grace: who refuses to watch the hands of the clock on the last day before her husband Charlie’s leave ends. The utter disparity of usual house chores cutting into the last fleeting moments they spend together will rip at the reader.

I also really enjoyed the timbre and tone of the aforementioned letters included in the novel. While some of Babe, Grace and Millie’s correspondence is featured, it is the letters of Charlie, Pete and Claude that most held my attention. The vernacular very much reflected the breezy nuances and idioms of the time period and the experience of the front is muted behind overt declarations of undying love and hope for the tenuous future.

My one complaint about the novel is its preoccupation with sex (ironic because it is a major theme and counterpart to war and the undercurrent of many actions--- Feldman explains its significance as a type of underlying civil construction and deconstruction …. ) awkwardly infusing paragraphs and sometimes jarring the flow of narrative as she outlines every single movement. At these moments, I felt like I was reading a flat out romance and not a serious literary endeavor focusing on the hardships of Americans at War. To say its gratuitous is not a stretch: its implication rather than stark descriptive realism would have been more effective and played into the other more subdued thematic strains of the novel.

Secondly, I found the multiple narratives to be slightly confusing---- but you will hit a page, mid-way through where something clicks and you can weave seamlessly from one tale into the next.

Altogether a splendid snapshot of an integral part of history. As a non-American reader, I was able to transplant the uncertainty, fear and despair into a national consciousness---where I could better understand what my grandfather ( a stretcher bearer) and my grandmother ( a war bride from Canadian-liberated Holland) underwent.

Read more about this exciting book at the TLC site as well as link to other blogs featuring the title.

Let's Talk Classic Adaptations (really just an excuse to throw in a discussion about History is Made at Night [1937])

For a girl who pursued and read the classics (literary and musical) through her high school and early university career, I figure it always helps to brush up on classics of all mediums--- including those not yet viewed by me in the film genre. Here's some recent viewage of mine:

Brief Encounter (dir. David Lean, screenplay by Noel Coward ( based on his play, Still Life )

Any good people in it?: Trevor Howard and Celia Johnson --- both excellent and believable. Celia gets more and more beautiful and beguiling as Lean manipulates colour and light to expose a woman in love

Literary Significance: Often referred to as one of the greatest romances ever filmed for the cinema and rated as the 2nd best British film ever made according to the BFI 100 list
Read more about Brief Encounter here. This movie rightly depressed me because it ends so bleakly and so hopelessly. It rather views like Film Noir: even though the only suspense lies in rather chaste weekly meetings between two married people who border on consummating an affair. Perhaps what leaves your soul so wrenched is the collective decency of both; their normalcy and believability and your absolute assurance that should they have crossed paths in another time, they would have been absolutely suited for each other. The "end of the affair" ( to throw in some Graham Greene for you) is as ill-timed as their short courtship. There wasn't a dry eye in my apartment( well, I was the only one in my apartment; but you get the point)

All This, and Heaven Too (dir. Anatole Litvak, screenplay by Casey Robinson (adapted from the novel by Rachel Field)
Any good people in it? : umm, yah! Our pal Charles Boyer and the luminous Bette Davis ( although don’t try finding chemistry between these two because they don’t have any)

Literary Significance: based on a melodramatic historical novel about the thwarted passion between an aristocrat and a governess and the murder of said aristocrat’s domineering wife.
It’s really hard to take this movie seriously; but it is a lot of fun with lots of stolen glances and snow and tragic hand-wringing and a married couple that really likes to throw things at each other in their infuriated passion behind closed doors.

History is Made at Night ( dir. Frank Bozage, screenplay by C. Graham Baker

Any good people in it?: our pal Charles Boyer again –and he is the most compelling romantic lead. Also, Jean Arthur and her cello-like speaking voice….
Literary Significance: Well! not really as it’s not adapted or inspired by anything but, readers, it deserves a moment because this film is a GONG SHOW! Describes Slant Magazine: “History Is Made at Night, which Andrew Sarris has called the most romantic title in the history of cinema (and I'm not going to argue with him) is a patchwork quilt genre bender that stands as one of Frank Borzage's supreme achievements.” Genre-bending indeed! This is part romantic comedy-psychological thriller-murder mystery-American in Paris-fish out of water-social commentary- DISASTER movie ( like epic, SHIP SINKING A LA TITANIC type Disaster Movie).

If you pitched this to Hollywood today it would get eyebrows raised and little thought. But it was the 30s and screwball comedy was in and apparently you could use a bit of that as your platform to build a pyramid of genre numbing proportions. Do not TRY to explain this film to anyone after you see it. I am having the dickens of a time trying to explain it to you. The article previously referenced goes on to say: “The improbability of the plot serves as a sort of dizzying high, as if they were saying, "This is the movies, and we can do anything." Pretty much.

Somewhere I read that they started shooting the film before the screenplay was finished so the cast and crew were just as flabberghasted by the rapid sequence of events as you will be when you watch it ( which you should; only because you will never see anything ever try to be it again). Nick Pinkerton writes: “Much of the reputation for extravagant romance that the film holds among admirers of classic cinema, I think, is owed to Arthur—to watch her dance with Boyer is to witness a woman falling in love in real time.
I am not the only one to tackle this. See this blog

This one mentions Boyer’s knack with a hat
Read about Why Charles Boyer is Awesome in This Movie

Mr. Skeffington (dir. Vincent Sherman, screenplay, Julius and Philip Epstein adapted from the novel by Elizabeth von Armin)
Any good people in it?: Claude Rains--- who eats his role for breakfast so mesmerizing and quietly strong he is in carrying the film’s undercurrent and Bette Davis’s eyes –also the rest of her, I guess, but her eyes are all you will notice.
Literary significance: another story taken from a popular melodramatic novel of the day. Released in 1944, I was very amazed by the ramification of German concentration camps utilized in the plot when Jewish Job Skeffington is imprisoned overseas, robbed of his substantial wealth and blinded by ill-treatment. Of course, during this era in Hollywood, the war was mentioned ( often to inspire American jingoism and as yet another means of propaganda)--- but rarely in such stark detail. The film also shows incredibly convincing newsreels from the Great War.

Note: Claude Rains really should have won an Academy for Best Actor for his turn here ( and not just a nomination nod for best supporting)

Women's Pulp Fiction: Now we KNOW where chicklit comes from

Have you ever read the Best of Everything? Well, you should. It’s about promise and hope and career girls who smoke cigarettes and drink coffee out of jars and hang out with dashing men.

It’s also scandalous for its time: with abortion and affairs and women abstaining ( or not ) from sex and talking way too much about all of it.

It features a publishing company at the end of the 1950s and a girl who is driven to become an editor and often sacrifices relationship for career.

A career? For a woman? In the 1950s? As fast as you can say TV Dinners, Jello and Spam, every preconceived notion you had about women of this era is stripped by the author to reveal a woman’s work world: with the same gossip, double standards and salary issues many young women face today.

It was made into a film, by the way, with Joan Crawford and Hope Lange and Stephen Boyd ( did I mention Stephen Boyd?) and Louis Jourdan ( but I think I need to mention Stephen Boyd again).

My friend Martha loaned me Skyscraper by Faith Baldwin ( a little pulp gem she had discovered at BMV here in Toronto) to take with me on a trip to New Orleans. I read it on the plane and then by the hotel pool.

Basically, the novel, as in the Jaffe story, features a young career driven woman. This time the scene is New York in the 1930s and the depression is keeping many from flourishing work. While our heroine dreams of climbing the company ladder, she is also severely loyal to her fiancé. Problem is, if she marries, she is no longer employed. During the depression years, jobs were given to those who didn’t have a support system: to marry meant a woman no longer “needed” to work and thus ambition was replaced by a docile domestic realm of motherhood and servitude.


What this incredibly cheesy ( at least to our standards) melodrama does is prove a very pertinent and lasting point: that women often feel they must choose one or the other: family --- or career. Though written and published near 80 years ago, this novel is surprisingly still relevant. Sure, the toned language, the hair rollers, the sweet dates and dutch treats and “wild” girls have been replaced by all of the mumbo jumbo that revolves around our 21st Century life--- but I don’t feel that the circumstances that plague said career girl are that different. She feels judged for choosing ambition over love and judged for feeling attraction to a man who doesn’t fit into the cookie cutter social status she is a result of .


These are two very interesting “chicklits” of yesterday which surprisingly feature the same ingredients as our modern fare of the same ilk: clothes, drinks out with boys, talks of sex and illicit acts, an obsession with shoes, double standards in the workplace and a wistful yearning for love and self-fulfillment at the same time. Sophie Kinsella this ain’t--- but you can see where she is coming from….

There are a few other titles in the same publication series as Skyscraper, under the umbrella Femmes Fatales: Women Write Pulp). Check out some of their other offerings, including the source material for the popular noir film, Laura.

New Orleans In Literature

I just returned from a week in New Orleans with my friend Jess.

We stayed at the fabulous Maison Dupuy in the French Quarter, ate beignets, saw plantations and went on a swamp tour --- alligators swam up to our boat!

As a Canadian with a passion for Acadian history, I was greatly relieved to find that the Acadian ties in New Orleans are still prevalent. For those unfamiliar, the term Cajun is the evolution of the word Acadian. After the great deportation of the Acadian people from Nova Scotia and New Brunswick by the British (1754-62 thereabouts), many settled in Louisiana--- eager to be in an area that spoke French as they did. Hence, our long ties to Louisiana and the inspiration between Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s poem “Evangeline.”

Indeed, alongside Longfellow, New Orleans has a rich literary history matched to its bustling, carnivalesque culture. While there, I described New Orleans as a sort of jubilant melancholia: a colourful parade of pageantry in its music, food, architecture and yet housing something so very dark beneath the surface. This makes for the perfect melodrama that has erupted in literary form.

Mark Twain called the city an “upholstered sewer” and winding the smelly, hot platitudes of Bourbon Street I can see where he got the idea. To read more of Twain’s initiation with the city, see the chapter entitled “The Metropolis of the South” in Life on the Mississippi. Margaret Mitchell set Rhett and Scarlett’s mythical honeymoon in the great city in Gone with the Wind and Tennessee Williams was inspired by the rambling streetcars ( the streetcar which hurries down the gorgeous St. Charles Avenue past tree-lined boulevards and statuesque old mansions was a wonder), the oldest in North America, when he wrote of that tragic, wilting Southern flower Blanche in A Streetcar Named Desire.

Truman Capote and Anne Rice write often of New Orleans; the latter being one of the city’s prime residents. If you venture into the Garden District, near the famous “ city of the dead” Lafayette Cemetary, you will find Anne Rice’s beautifully gothic old home. The cemetery and its environs paint a perfect canvas for her vampires ( see Interview with the Vampire as one example).

In Classics territory, the beginning of Manon Lescaut by Antoine Prevost and The Awakening by Kate Chopin both use New Orleans as their backdrops.

Finally, our pal John Grisham has used New Orleans as part of his unending love song to legal procedure coupled with southern morality in The Client and the Pelican Brief.

The narrative trajectory of slaves housed in cabins on the fringe of the great sugar cane plantations speak to the tragedy of the Slave era, yes; but also to the ability of story and song to withstand persecution and forced diaspora. Some of the Tales of Br’er Rabbit and other morality tales accredited to Uncle Remus winnowed from the plantations surrounding New Orleans.

The mélange of dialects resulting from the clash of American and creole cultures, not to mention laced with Caribbean and Acadian French make New Orleans a veritable melting pot of culture, history and snappy decorum.

Pending a close in-person immersion in the city my friend and I got to know very well, a mental “arm chair “ trip using one of the aforementioned stories as your portal is a worthwhile investment.

If you’re ever in New Orleans, I highly recommend the following:

A trip to the Red Fish Grill: delicious seafood in the French Quarter—great wine and ambience

A tour to Laura Plantation: a great Creole plantation and one of the best tours I have ever been on. This gorgeous building and its aligning slave row house some of the most brilliant first account narratives of the time period and the Golden Age of the South.

Café Beignet (the Bourbon St location)--we much preferred this to the much-lauded Café du Monde. Here, they serve hot and wonderful beignet and their patio seating in a courthouse dedicated to Jazz Legends is a treat. Every night trumpeter SteamBoat Willie and his crew perform a variety of favourites stretching eras --- a lot indigenous to New Orleans’ great jazz tradition and history.

Lafitte’s Blacksmith Shop--- now a bar, it used to house the iniquitous dealings of slave trader /rum runner/ pirate brothers Jean and Pierre Lafitte. One of the oldest buildings in New Orleans with a subpar martini but a great candlelit ambience.

One Screenplay told 3--no--4 times; but only told WELL once....

If you have never seen a Charles Boyer film, you are missing out. Iconically, he has entered our public sphere without notice by many: his daring thief in the 1937 film 'Algiers', Pepe Le Moko, was the inspiration for Pepe Le Pew--- the little, enamoured french skunk in Looney Tunes. Add to this Mr. Boyer's starring opposite some of the classic leading ladies of his age: Irene Dunne, Jennifer Jones, Bette Davis, Jean Arthur, Hedy Lamarr, Marlene Deitrich, to name a few, and you have a roster of exceptional viewage.

I have been pursuing a bit of an unofficial Charles Boyer Film Festival This Summer: largely because, for the most part, the film roles he took were in really, really entertaining movies.

This includes his starring turn as voyager playboy Michel Marnet in 1939's 'Love Affair'.

You may be thinking: I don't know this film. But, yes. Yes you do. Chances are at some point in your life you have stumbled across 'An Affair to Remember': a word- for- word, frame -by -frame remake starring Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr. If somehow that eluded you, you caught 'Sleepless in Seattle': a big homage to the story featuring Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan --- clips of the Grant film are shown throughout. Perhaps you even caught the 1994 remake (it's the worst of the lot) starring Warren Beatty and Annette Bening: best known as being the last film Katherine Hepburn ever made. If you have ever thought of waiting for someone at the top of the Empire State Building at an arranged date, you have thought, subliminally, of this story. All four films, same source inspiration.

This movie, this screenplay ( penned in 1939 by Delmer Daves and David Ogden Stewart) is apparently so memorable that it needed to be made thrice. THRICE. .. with one popular homage.

I was reaching the point in my Unofficial Boyer Film Fest when this, one of his first American "talkies" ( he had done some silent film; but if you hear Boyer speak and immediately note, as I, that he could read the telephone book for a living, you recognize that these are not worth digging up and viewing) was in queue. I had to admit I was sort of "meh" about it. After all, I had seen 'An Affair to Remember' and 'Sleepless in Seattle' and I didn't really like either. Same story, mind, same inspiration and scaled love atop Empire State--- and I just didn't really care ( though I must admit to thinking of it while I was atop said State Building).

Oddly enough and completely unpredicted, I LOVED the 1939 Love Affair. Loved it! Charles Boyer and Irene Dunne had fabulous chemistry, the cinematography was interesting for its age and the playfulness of their "meet-cute" and courtship onboard the voyage that throws them together, the wistful, solemn and sacred visit to shore to Madeira and finally to the separation that blights their fateful meeting atop the tower worked very, very well. Of a story that I knew extremely well, this film made a surprise. ... it stripped all earlier familiarity and presented the same words, the same frames, the same characters in new, far more appealing light.


This preamble serves to pose the following question: in literature the same ingredients: words, settings, characters, plot strewn across two novels rarely happens ( except in adaptations, homages, pastiches) and the exact same story, told twice, would be easily differentiated, would it not? Is it even possible that one could tell word-for-word if Grisham copied all of Dickens' words--- in the same order? For truly, Affair to Remember is basically the closest remake of a film ever made... it's not even artistic re-interpretation---it's just the same thing...

but with different actors.

In film, two EXACT same plots and formulas are at the mercy of the director, yes; but mostly at the hands of the two leads.

The EXACT same scenes played by Grant and Kerr in the 1957 version left me completely flat--- but, the exact same words and scenes and movements and moments enacted by Boyer and Dunne worked wonders to a story I could, for years, take or leave.

The movie is one, sprawling cliche: at least by today's romantic dramedy standards. But, in 1939, the material was fresh---- it ends bittersweetly ( as those who have seen Sleepless in Seattle or Love Affair the Second by Beatty/Bening or the Cary Grant version will remember), it starts with a risque, tongue-in-cheek drip of banter between two actors who embody their characters so well you see their redemptions, their closeness, their slight changes before you.

Basically, this ramble is about the same thing. The same thing being told 3, 4 ( if you count the Nora Ephron Sleepless version) times; but only really working once.

Same script, same basic story... nothing special about it.... but somehow, the 1939 version struck a chord. It was touching, moving, funny and sleekly smart.

Major Bonus: it's in the public domain--- so hunt it un-guiltily on youtube and spend 97 minutes with a bonafide, Academy Award nominated classic.... starring Irene Dunne with her fabulous speaking and singing voice... and, of course, Pepe Le Pew.

Dear: 'Now, Voyager', you ruined my life.... but in a good way

Like the best books, sometimes the right films have to find you at the right moment for their emotional impact and resonance to be optimal.

This rings true for my viewing of Now, Voyager (1942)this week. Somehow I always had an inkling that this film and I would connect; we just needed to meet each other at the right time. As a 30 year old “spinster” so much of Charlotte Vale’s (Bette Davis) borrowed butterfly wings and contentment with the stars (while just evading the moon) hit me on the deepest level.

To say that for two hours my heart was caught so tightly in my throat I had to remind myself to breathe is not hyperbole. Now, two days later, snaps of dialogue run on repeat mode through my head.

I had seen clips of this famed romantic film and have probably caught long lapses of it at some points in 30 years: especially as a gal who loves to catch interludes of black and white films. The other night , I saw it through for the first time and learned that like “It Never Entered My Mind”as sung by Sarah Vaughn or the TSO straining Ravel’s 'Pavane for a Dead Princess 'on a gloomy November night that there is a melancholy un-breaking here and a terse sense of nostalgia that burrows itself within my imaginative consciousness.

Here, as in The Blue Castle ( a favourite book) a 30ish woman has been stripped of her life by an over-bearing mother who feeds her belief that she has little self worth. Cocooned in a society house and watching years tick her by, her romantic and artistic nature is harbored in scrapbooks of a voyage past and the blissful carvings she etches into beautiful boxes.

She is mocked by her pretty niece and goaded by her mother and her existence seems to be that of standing on shore when all that excites, delights and smacks of love glistens on the waves beyond.

In fact, the theme of voyage pervades the story: from Charlotte’s recounting of a romance on deck in her early 20s (stifled, of course, by her mother) through the insertion of Whitman’s poem, "The Untold Want" by a kind doctor willing Charlotte to finally set sail (figuratively and literally) and penultimately in the voyage that defines her life and her burgeoning relationship with married architect Jerry, played by Paul Henreid. There is immediate kinship and an ethereally preternatural connection between the two fortunate enough to cross paths in the most unlikely circumstances. For those of us who subscribe to the Brontean tradition of kinship, this will hit a hard chord. What follows is a week of sheer delight as Charlotte finds herself validated in the eyes of a stranger. Her strength is drawn from the fact that someone loves her, yes, but in her acceptance that all she has bottled up in her mind and soul, now reflected in her being, is enough to set eyes to magnetically seeking her and conversation to circling her as an orb.

When an unexpected interlude with Jerry in Rio ends, Charlotte is left to recognize that which has just past was probably the peak of her life. She says goodbye to Jerry and returns home. The slow walk that takes her in her front door and into the holds of her old life is tragic. Again, I think of The Blue Castle, when Valancy, circumstances changed, rips herself from Barney and returns to her mother and her drab existence.

A short engagement with an eligible widower and a few encounters with Jerry sustain her as she redefines herself under the watchful eye of a woman who no longer possesses her. Charlotte is a woman who is content to bottle memory, to live on the small mementoes of a love past and of the promise of helping someone who direly needs her.

The film ends with Charlotte accepting that happiness and contentment for her can be a slice of what others would grab all of. She is able to recognize worth in helping someone who reminds her so of herself and with the formation of a kind of family, she is able to experience, distantly, the relationship she has waited her entire life for.

This is romance without Hollywood consummation. The music swells and we are left without the final kiss; just the promise or dream of something beyond the characters due to circumstances, timing and sacrificial loss. Instead, we are left with one of the most tense and real and palpable moments ever filmed: Jerry, as he has done always, takes two cigarettes to his lips and lights them and, in silent, teary communion, the two recognize that what they have: untouchable, unbreakable, a forged strip of territory ( to paraphrase a line of the script) is heaven compared to the years of emptiness before.

In The Blue Castle Valancy admits: “"Isn't it better to have your heart broken than to have it wither up?[…]Before it could be broken it must have felt something splendid. That would be worth the pain." At the end of the film my heart was breaking. Somehow since I had invested in a bit of mirrored reflection with a character I identified with I willed the outcome to change. Instead, wish fulfillment is slightly tweaked from convention to acceptance. The happy ending lies not in traditional relationship; yet in the acceptance of a different kind of happiness and in two characters realizing that the pivotal point of their relationship is cemented when they are both free to come into their own. A symbiotic and touching relationship, yes, even though wedding bells will not peal and the moon is still far off.

Saturday Morning Out-of-Nowhere Film Adaptation: The Young Philadelphians (1959)

You know when it's Saturday morning and you're up and you don't want to get out of bed so you channel surf? And you hope to find a movie just starting so you can just watch it and not do anything?

My Saturday Morning Movie of this kind was The Young Philadelphians based on the novel The Philadelphian by Richard Powell. Note: I think they titled it on the young ones because the novel is supposedly a generation-stretching epic and we just hang out at the tail end.

Released in 1959 and starring Paul Newman in black and white ( as opposed to Paul Newman in delicious technicolour), it is a society story of social climbing, almost-affairs, oddly timed neck-arch kisses (so popular of the day) and black pumps with neat hats worn by secretaries with few speaking lines fringing law offices where great scandals take place. Look at the caption on the film poster! It's all about angry young moderns in suggestive poses, stripping the upper crust to the scandalous flesh underneath. bwa ha.

A young woman realizing that the man she has married for money and stature is impotent (played by Batman Adam West) flees to the young irish immigrant who loves her. Returning from her wedding night away from her spouse, she learns that Batman has been killed in a car crash. The young irish immigrant still loves her and visits her in the hospital 9 months later when she has given birth to their son. But, she wants her boy to have her late husband's clout of a family name so she refuses to accept his love. She also confronts her late husband's mother and says that even though they all know the child was not an actual Lawrence, she will keep the name for her son; but never expect anything else from the great family.

Fastforward years later and Paul Newman is a promising law student who takes a summer job in construction with his irish immigrant father as the foreman. During the summer he drinks at classy parties with his friend Chet ( Robert Vaughn who would go on to star in that 1960s homoerotic spy vehicle opposite David McCallum; but who was nominated for an Oscar here) and woos a really dazzling Barbara Rush: the daughter of a prominent lawyer.

They want to get married but her father eventually coaxes Paul into his established firm and Barbara thinks that Paul has sold out and used her for monetary gain.

...and it goes on and on with social cues and competing law firms and Newman getting smarter and smarter and wearing prettier suits and you really think this is a film about a young man's ambition and resilience. After all, he fights in the Korean war and even holds Chet's hand when his arm is blown off ( the still remaining one).

There are cold, wistful meetings with lovely Barbara and hi-jinx when Paul uses his (as of yet unknown to him) dad's political connections to sneak into the county records to steal a high client from a duelling firm.

Barbara and Paul run into each other, immaculately dressed, there is a scene where Paul almost has an affair with a hot, talented wife of a mentor lawyer and Paul even snuggles a chihuahua to charm an elderly client.

You would think that it's about how Paul learned to make it on his own and strive to live up to his heftily purchased ( purchased in death, emotion and sacrifice ) birth name.

But, actually, just when you think that you have 20 more minutes of the film and more awkward neck-arch kisses, it turns INTO A MURDER MYSTERY/COURTROOM DRAMA!

Honestly, readers, I had no idea that this happened as I knew nothing about this film so this blind-sighted me with melodramatic, scandalous delight! Suicide! Purchased Guns! stolen inheritances! scenes in the jail "Drunk Tank", unshaven men! trust issues! MENTAL ILLNESS!

There hasn't been a twist this unexpected since the Usual Suspects.

Chet ( Robert Vaughn pulling out the acting chops that scored him the Oscar nod) is charged with murder and Paul ( even though he is a tax lawyer) bumps high criminal lawyers to take the case for his friend. It's all a sequence about character, doing what's right, what makes a man a man, and who stole my cheque just because I slugged too many whiskeys!?

Oh kids, they just don't make them like this anymore. At all. Ever.

I promise you that I will never read the source material ( life's too short for twisted murder mystery/ courtroom drama/ class tales of sordid American Dreams ); but this was an enjoyable and intense and really interesting flick.

So, some Saturday morning on the verge of blurry-eyed " Should I go back to sleep?", I hope, instead, you give 2 hours to this gem.

Also, there's Paul Newman.

Adaptations!

Adaptations!

Let’s talk about some:

First off, I was delighted to re-discover a classic I have been aching to see since I was a teenager. When I was in high school director Ernst Lubitsch’s 1946 adaptation of Cluny Brown (based on the novel of the same name by Margery Sharp) stole my heart. I remember it stayed with me weeks after and I immediately sought out ( and loved ) the novel. The film is of course the ultra-condensed version; but still ridiculously charming. The film is NOT available on DVD ( though I have searched far and wide) but lo and behold some great person has uploaded it clearly onto youtube so last night I saw the film that stole my heart in yesteryear. In fact, I saw the film for the first time since several subsequent re-readings of its source novel in my early 20s (as a 30 yr old, saying early 20s makes me feel ancient).

The novel is a delightful little class comedy of errors set in small village Britain in the years preluding the Second World War. Cluny ( short for Clover), a snappy and imaginative plumber’s niece is sent into domestic service by an uncle who feels she needs to find her place. There, Cluny encounters a colourful bouquet of characters: winsome archetypes of the British upper class, a snooty chemist, a military retiree with a kind heart and an author-in-exile who is quite the play thing for a rich family who feels a Czech refugee emblemizes their commitment to stopping Hitler’s onslaught.

The film adaptation starring Peter Lawford, Jennifer Jones and Charles Boyer is just delightful: in the snappy, sharp and popcorn-paced tone one expects of those sparklingly written romantic comedies of the era. Jennifer Jones plays Cluny with a mischievous and sensuous undertone: her skin is luminescent and her dark eyes are wide and doe-like and you experience everything she does as she experiences it. Charles Boyer is divine as the Czech refugee, his delicious French accent caressing a sarcastic and dark philosophy that undermines and cuts British tradition as it rampages before him. The developing bond between his Prof Belinski and Jones’ effervescent parlour maid is a delight: they are very much kindred spirits.

There is a heap of double entendre in the film and scenes that border on risqué for its time period and the wordplay is fabulous. I was so glad I found it. It played quite well on my MacBook.

It also has nudged me to re-visit the book, I repeat, a favourite of mine in my early university years.


Next, I am thrilled to the gills for two upcoming adaptations of my favourite Dickens’ novel, Great Expectations. I have seen all available adaptations of this from the David Lean version to the modernized take to the miniseries with Ioan Gruffudd and Charlotte Rampling to that awkward late 70s BBC production and I have to admit that I have never been satisfied. Unlike Little Dorrit and Bleak House, complete and true homages to the works of this great writer, I always finish a film adaptation of GE less than full. Something always seems to be missing: whether they spend too much time on Magwitch and Havisham to fully play out the grace and compassion of Joe and Herbert Pocket --- may be part of the ongoing problem. Thus, I am thrilled with the new BBC treatment (take that BBC for swearing off 19th Century bonnet films! I knew this day would come) and the upcoming feature film directed by Mike Newell. I am sure between the two they will touch on some of my favourite facets of the great novel and comparisons will abound.