The Cold War and Cinema on Sky Arts - Part 2 - Cuba and a New Dawn

The same presenters from Episode 1 start this episode with a discussion about British spy films. A little about Ian Fleming before we see clips from the second of the  James Bond movies. From Russia With Love came in 1963. The Russian threat of the time is disguised, according to John Aizlewood,  by only references to SMERSH and SPECTRE. It's Simon Heffer who describes Bond and Sean Connery, but this is nothing to do with the Cold War. In 1965 came Michael Caine's Harry Palmer in The Ipcress File from the book by Len Deighton. I laughed at the deadpan actor we see. These are my late teens early twenties so all very familiar. Two more Harry Palmer films came next. 

When Simon talks about "the complexity and duplicity" of the Cold War, he refers to both sides fearing the science and technology of the other. That was probably the summation of this whole series. In 2011 came the film adaptation of John Le Carre's Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. This was already a brilliant TV series three decades previously starring Alec Guinness as Smiley and a fabulous cast. Gary Oldman took the part in the film and was equally good. We were told how well Le Carre disguised the traitor in the book and how this was realised in the film.

Cuba

After the long introduction, we are told about Fidel Castro's Cuban Revolution from 1953 to 1959. Graham Greene's Our Man in Havana was an obvious choice to start this section. We see Alec Guiness and Noel Coward in the 1959 film, almost a light hearted version? We are then on to the Cuban missile crisis and the "world wide paranoia". We see some real life footage of JFK addressing Congress, before we see clips of  1993's Matinee that was new to me. Ian Nathan liked how it showed the panic in the country. We also see extracts from Thirteen Days from 2000 whose direction by Roger Donaldson impressed Derek Malcolm along with an all star cast.

The Atomic Age

After some documentary footage of an H Bomb test, The threat of nuclear destruction was all too real. On the Beach from 1969 was, according to Ian Nathan, "ahead of it's time" in it's portrayal of nuclear devastation. The clip we see does not have a happy ending for the survivors of a submarine crew. In 1964 came the blockbuster Seven Days in May". A disarmament treaty that is under discussion is hijacked by Burt Lancaster's coup-de-tat. 1964's Fail Safe with Henry Fonda is one film I want to check out. But we have all been waiting for Stanley Kubrick's Dr Strangelove again from 1964 that Derek Malcolm said "towers above them all". One of my favourite movies. Peter Sellers telling the Russian leader "something going wrong with the Bomb. The Bomb, Dimitri. The Hydrogen Bomb". The full clip on YouTube. The film is called a horrific satire with that terrible farcical ending.

The Space Race

Not sure if this was part of the Cold War, but no denying the competition between the USA and Russia. The Right Stuff from 1983 describes it well. Sometimes stupidly "who wins (the space race) controls the world". Then clips from the film JFK. Not sure why this is relevant to this episode? But Derek Malcolm talks about Oliver Stones "controversial film". I suppose the producers wanted us to see something of this important film.

Alice Guy

 

One of the last articles in the March Edition of Sight and Sound was about Alice Guy who, when married, was Alice Guy-Blache. It is in the "From the Archive" section. She was the first, and for a very long time, the only female film director. Born in France in 1873, she started making films there around 1896 using pioneering technology invented by Leon Gaumont. From there to New York with her husband Herbert Blache, she made hundreds of silent movies. Many are described in this illuminating article that was written by Francis Lacassin and first published in the magazine in 1971. 

The Hypericum Border

 

In previous years I had pruned the hypericums at the end of Autumn. That is both the single large bush in the middle and the many small shrubs that surround it. But this year I waited until this week for it's major pruning. 

It all looks reasonably healthy including the larger shrub that I thought I had lost after the hard winter of a couple of years ago. At least it has given some space for the forget me nots, daffodils  and tulips that have reappeared.

My posts of 1st April 2016 and 23rd August last year  show the ups and downs of this plant.

The Cold War and Cinema on Sky Arts - Part 1 - The Cold War Begins 1945 - 1960

 

A series from 3DD Productions first shown in 2021 that I didn't see first time round. Narrated by Jonathon Kydd with contributions from Ian Nathan, Derek Malcolm, Simoon Heffer of the Daily Telegraof and John Aizlewood from The Daily Telegraph. The only problem with this series is that it is mainly a list of movies and not enough about their relevance to the Cold War.

The episode starts with some news footage of Winston Churchill addressing Congress in America in 1946. He uses the words "an iron curtain has descended on the continent". We hear about some of the politics of the time before Ian Nathan introduces 1949's The Third Man. Derek Malcolm called it "one of the greatest British films ever made". We also see a clip from 1948's The Iron Curtain starring Dana Andrews and Gene Tierney. 

The Cold War reaches the Far East

The spy movie from 1955 Soldier of Fortune starred Clark Gable but strangely we travel another forty years for 1987's The Last Emperor. An excellent movie as I recall, all about how Japan had destroyed so much in China. Back to Robert Altman's M.A.S.H. from 1948 and Americans in Korea. And a strange film from 1954 called The Bridge at Toko-Ri. But it did star William Holden and Grace Kelly.

A Suspicious Time

Invasion USA from 1952 now seems like a comedy, although it probably didn't at the time, imagining a Russian invasion of America. Not sure why we get Invasion of the Body Snatchers from 1956 whereas John Frankenheimers'  1962's The Manchurian Candidate was "most terrifying" according to Derek Malcolm. We are then looking at The Committee for Un American Activities with Guilty by Suspicion from 1991, whilst 2005's Goodnight and Good Luck about McCarthyism was directed by George Clooney. Ian Nathan said it showed "the power of journalism".

The Berlin Wall

One, Two, Three from 1961 was new to me even though it was written by Billy Wilder and  I.A.L. Diamond and directed by the former. A comedy about Berlin. 2015's Bridge of Spies directed by Steven Spielberg and starring Tom Hanks and Mark Rylance was much more familiar as was the adaptation of John Le Carre's  The Spy Who Came In From The Cold from 1962 that starred  Richard Burton and Claire Bloom. We end with 1962's Escape From East Berlin, probably only because in had the city in the title.

The Whole Equation - A History of Hollywood by David Thomson

 

I should start by saying that all of David Thomson's books I have read so far were first class. The Big Screen (post 9th October 2014), A Light in the Dark - A History of Movie Directors (post 8th March 2021), Moments That Made Movies (post 19th August 2022) and How to Watch a Movie (post 22nd March 2023. I also have his reference books Have You Seen .... and The Biographical Dictionary of Film. So I was looking forward to this new volume about Hollywood. However, I found it all a bit of a mess. There seemed very little structure and lots of repetition. So something of a slog through this long book. Someone said it was "droningly dictatorial". It does ramble on. However, there are gems along the way that made it worth while.  I made some notes on each of the 22 chapters so I had better put these into some sort of order.

The Gamble and the Lost Rights

How wonderful it starts with a friend. Robert Towne, a screenwriter and Oscar winner for Chinatown. Not that well paid until he assisted with the Mission Impossible franchise. We do get a decent history of the making of Chinatown especially the relationship between Towne and director Roman Polanski who changed the ending and made it so awful. The bad guy survives. But the sequel The Two Jakes was "a turkey".  But somehow the book often harks back to the things in this chapter. Why? 

Mayer and Thalberg

Some stuff about the heads of studios - David O. Selznick, Irving Thalberg and Louis B. Mayer. Thomson obviously admires Thalberg but despises Mayer; "greedy and cruel" with starlets visiting his office.

The Place

That must be Los Angeles. "The light is brighter than elsewhere - you can measure it on a light meter". "There is a glamour, a life enhancement, a romance in American cinematography that you do not find in other countries". A bit about the growth in the population of LA from 150,000 in 1890 that exploded to a million in1915 to the 8 million of today. The supply of water was always a problem, the risk of earthquakes, but the light!

To be in an Audience

Thomson quotes from the stirring ending of Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby. "So we beat on, boats against the current, born back ceaselessly into the past". The title refers to that shared experience in a cinema, "there is no stopping or repeating" ( had to go and see Inception and Oppenheimer twice to understand something that I missed) and that it is "fundamental to the beauty and art of what we call a movie".

Charlie

An important section, but not for me. Mentions, of course, for The Gold Rush 1925, The Circus 1928 and City Lights 1931, the "pinnacle" of his career.

By a Nose

Why does a History of Hollywood have a chapter about Nicole Kidman's prosthetic nose as Virginia Woolf in The Hours? Thomson tells us all about the voice, the make-up and deportment that made her unrecognisable. The author is obviously a huge fan of Nicole, but why a whole chapter in this sort of book? OK, there were deservedly lost of Oscar nominations and wins. And a cast to die for including Meryl Streep and Julianne Moore, class direction from Stephen Daldry and the screenplay by David Hare from the Pulitzer Prize winning Michael Cunningham. Thomson notes how rare on film is someone who commits themselves to a role like this. "I still like The Hours, I was moved by it". Then "there isn't a sight in movies as momentous as shots of a face as it's mind is being changed". "And only movies have allowed that". It's a superb piece by the author, but why here in this book? 

The Man in the Hat ...... The Woman in Gloves

Oh dear, now we jump back, way back to D W Griffiths and early film. After several hundred shorts, here comes The Birth of a Nation in 1915 and Intolerance the following year. The author tells us "my task .... (it is the passion of the equation) is to convince you that the two are one: that the urge to tell these stories is inseparable from the wish to make money". The book is littered with these scattershot ideas.

Stroheim and Seeing Money

"Anyone in film, or into it, has grown up with the legend of Stroheim". I did not have a clue, David. The movie Greed from 1925  is forty reels long. Thomson says it's "one of the most important achievements in silent film". But nine hours? A long and tedious biography of the film maker.

The Frenzy on the Wall

Here is the author living in Streatham as a child, the late 40's, the cinemas there. Should this not have started the book and why here? Lots of box office statistics, all boring.

Respect

All about Louis B. Mayer (again!) of MGM, the highest paid man in America. Who are the MPPDA (now the MPAA)? Mayer was at the helm (and chairman) of of the newly formed International Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. The birth of the Oscars. 

At the Paradise

Somehow an Edward Hopper painting from 1929 leads us into the advent of sound in pictures. Not an easy birth. 

The Factory

Thomson asks us "What is Art" and then goes into an interminable explanation. He calls the studios "the factory" and dwells on what it takes to make a film. Somehow we are on to the films of King Vidor (as I said it's all over the place) especially the very successful The Big Parade. Then on to War and Peace from 1956 and Duel in the Sun from 1946. When he talks about financing pictures, we are on to Greta Garbo and James Cagney. He compares   Gone with the Wind (the all time success) with the box office failure that was Jean Renoir's  La Regle de Jeu. But then how the latter was a "landmark and a masterpiece). When Thomson slags off films of today at the end of this section, is he just being stupidly controversial for the sake of it? 

Viable Business

Going back in time, he tells us how many films a star had to make in a year. James Cagney made thirty two in ten years. Including playing Bottom in A Midsummer Night's Dream (highly exceptional). Thomson notes "the manner in which the screenplay itself became a managerial tool, a set of plans, insurance that the system would be upheld". What does this all mean? He rambles on "The script in Hollywood is now regarded as a sacred thing; time and again the emptiness of modern movies is blamed on bad scripts, and with ample reason". I could not believe what I was reading. Then more boring stuff about Hollywood producers again, and then the unions (the Writer's Guild the most protected union ever). "They are technicians rather than authors" because their work is never theirs. And do not get me started about his views on agents!

Golden?

Now we know Thomson's golden age of film. The 1930's and 40's. There is too much about It's a Wonderful Life and how it lost out to The Best Years of Our Lives at the Oscars. But then a nice piece about Preston Sturges, initially a writer, he thought he could direct his own scripts. And did so very successfully. Until a sad ending to his career. After a highly successful period with Paramount, he refused to accept their new contract, and ended in failure. More like this please.  

Divorce, Hollywood Style

Who could be interested in all of this? Not me. A lot about David Selznick again. He almost has a whole column in the Index at the end. Why not put everything about him in one place rather than dozens of different pages all through the book? I was not interested in his private life. Sorry.

Our Town

Of course that's LA. A potted history but then an extraordinary couple of pages Harlem Carpenter or Jean Harlow as we know her. "America's slut". She married Paul Bern who is found dead, naked in his dressing room. A big scandal but Harlow went on to make many more films, forty two in all before she died at twenty six. Compared to Katherine Hepburn - "a model of feminist independence".

The Darkness and the Light

After the war, the dark inside a cinema was an alternative to the daylight outside, so was "the bet place to be". Interesting about the dark films of the post war period 1945-1949. So "where did noir come from. An intriguing question and one not adequately answered". Thomson mentions Crossfire, The Killers, Double Indemnity and others. A dozen pages at the end covers the late forties in style.

In a Lonely Place

Thomson describes the title as "I am thinking about a kind of alienation that begins within the film business itself, and in it's relation to America". It "is elusive" to say the least. "The loneliness is actual, you can feel it in LA". We are in the early fifties and soon we are on to The House Committee For Un-American Activities and The Blacklist. Not forgetting unions, gangsters and strikes. Or The Committee For The First Amendment. A collection of top movie people including John Huston, Danny Kaye, Gene Kelly, Lauren Bacall and Humphrey Bogart among others. Arguing about the "unfriendly hearings". Joseph Losey leaves America when his communist background rears it's head, and in the UK makes The Criminal, The Servant, Accident and The Go-Between. All brilliant movies (that's me).  Other films in this period discussed are Crossfire, Force of Evil, The Maltese Falcon, High Sierra (those last three with Bogart). 

"What is Cinema?"

This part all starts with RKO. Not the biggest studio but one that produced some outstanding movies. But they dumped Lucille Ball thinking she had no future in film. She had previously met Desi Arnaz and they formed the company Desilu. They paid for a pilot of a comedy called I Love Lucy and sold it to CBS for not much. It became the nation's number one TV show and by 1953 had a revenue of Six Million Dollars. In 1967 Gulf and Weston bought Desilu for Seventeen Million Dollars. This was just to show how TV was taking over from cinema. But films fight back with Cinemascope and the biggest screens showing The King and I, Carousel, South Pacific, The Ten Commandments, The Greatest Show on Earth (one of my early movies), and Ben-Hur. We then get a list of all the stars who really wanted to work in films and not TV including Cary Grant and Grace Kelly (To Catch a Thief). Then more about Hitchcock and Billy Wilder and their successes. When the author goes on to some film history, we hear that it is the French who take the work of American directors far more seriously than their homeland, and find themselves as "Auteurs". The first ever book on Hitchcock was by Claude Chabrol and Eric  Rohmer!

A Film We Can't Refuse

Into 1960 and Cleopatra. And other big blockbusters of the sixties. And how the movies were sold off to TV. Then all those films of the 60's and early 70's such as The Godfather,

Right Before Your Eyes

Oh No! He starts with The Matrix and then something about horror films. It's just turning into a list of movies, has he got bored with the book, or as he previously remarked, the only good films are those from way back. we do get some insight into the making of Heaven's Gate. but we have heard all that before. But there does seem to be an interesting book called "Final Cut: Art Money and EGO in the making of Heavens Gate, the film that sank United Artists" by Steven Bach.

That's All Folks?

To finish we get lots of facts, lots of numbers (for example cinema chains going bust) and some stuff on independent films. Thomson glosses over Miramax. He says later  "I regret the way that America has elected to make films for it's bluntest section of society (yes, he actually says this) and in ways that flatter them". And there is "much evidence that digital images will not last" ... "there is a deadness in digital" ... "they abandon the one essential: reliance on light".  Then "I am alarmed and mystified by the way film still photography have so fallen in love with digital imagery". His "last story" makes him out to be a bitter old man, which I'm sure he is not. 

All Of Us Strangers, The Zone Of Interest and Anyone But You

 

Nominated for Best British Film at the BAFTA's, All Of Us Strangers was almost like a theatrical production. Just two sets, the first in an ultra modern apartment in a London high rise block, and the other an older suburban semi somewhere in the north. Andrew Scott is Adam, lonely until he meets another resident Harry (Paul Mescal) with whom he starts an affair. All a bit boring? Maybe until a type of dream sequence when Adam goes back to his old childhood home. He is welcomed by his parents as they were twenty years ago. Jamie Bell and Claire Foy are his father and mother who somehow don't think it's strange he is back with them as a grown man. They ask about his life. 

The dialogue here is quite exceptional. Writer and director Andrew Haig has conjured up a type of fantasy about all the times you would like to revisit those past times but with the experience of life. You cannot help thinking about your own childhood. I was totally sold on the idea "if you could go back". The only trouble is that the scenes of the present day pale in comparison with those with Adam's parents. Claire Foy is absolutely outstanding. BAFTA  nominations all over the place. 

On top of all that is the most wonderful soundtrack. The Pet Shop Boys, Fine Young Cannibals, Alison Moyet, The Housemartins, The Ink Spots, Blur, Fleetwood Mac, Bronski Beat, The Psychedelic Furs and even a version of I Will Survive. All forgotten with the blast of the final track, Frankie Goes to Hollywood's The Power of Love, eventually blasting out from the cinema speakers. Not since Los Fabulosos Cadillac's El Matador over the credits of Grosse Pointe Blank have I been so stuck in  my seat. 

A very loose adaptation of the Martin Amis book, The Zone of Interest is an interesting and thought provoking movie about the family who live outside the walls of Auschwitz in the middle years of WW2. In German with subtitles, as it should be. Christian Friedel plays the camp boss Rudolf Hoss. (Yes, that Rudolf Hoss). His wife Hedwig (the brilliant Sandra Huller from Anatomy of a Fall) has created  a beautiful house and garden in the years they have been there. So when she hears they will have to move, she goes ballistic. It is only when we hear about their horrible city lives before that we kind of understand. And Rudolf, well?  Director Jonathon Glazer has adapted the book to give us something of a "bruising watch" according to film critic Wendy Ide. You only have to look at the pictures on the posters to see.

Rudolf has no social skills, he just seems like an automaton going about his work, even though we only see him at home. Hedwig is an awful person under a veneer of culture. Her mother comes to stay but unsurprisingly does not hang around. The worst moment for me was when Rudolf is fishing in the lake while his children bathe. Suddenly he cannot get out soon enough and rushes the children home for a bath. But it is the sound design that will unfortunately stick with you. Glazer's Under The Skin had a similar uncomfortable tone. So a domestic drama played out like some surreal figment of a crazy man's imagination. 

Thank goodness for the stupid drama that is Anyone But You. I always want to see how a modern adaptation of a Shakespeare comedy plays out. Think The Taming of the Shrew adapted for Ten Things I Hate About You, or She's the Man from Twelfth Night or Get Over It from A Midsummer Night's Dream. This time it's Much Ado About Nothing that gets the Hollywood treatment. Even down to the odd quotes that appear on unlikely props. There are even lines that are spoken direct from the text. And the two lead's names are Bea and Ben! Sydney Sweeney and Glen Powell are obviously there for their looks and not their acting talent. But who pops up in the mainly Australian setting but Bryan Brown, now 76 and still going strong. Lots of songs, I didn't know one. But the light and the colour was great. 

Wendover Brook - A Tributary of Bearbrook - The Complete Route

It all started with my post of the 31st January. I realised that the maps I included showed the route of Wendover Brook and it might be an idea to follow and photograph it's progress.

The photos were taken over five days, a couple of which were only to check my records. In fact the first photo below was taken on the last day. Where the photos are numbered, these refer to the Google maps that start each section.

Part 1    The Source

The map at the very top is courtesy of a website for The Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs and a section called Thame Operational Catchment: Water Bodies and a sub section called Bear Brook and Wendover Brook Water Body. Wendover Brook is the blue line. I thought I had found the source of Wendover Brook on the penultimate day where it crosses Lionel Avenue. However the map shows the source near the junction of Perry Street and Dobbies Lane. Here there is a cul-de-sac called St Agnes Gate and so on the last day I went to see what I could find.

What I found was a very high fence, (see below) and even jumping up I was not able to see anything. Until at one point near the end I was able to see the brook and take the photo above. It could be that the area between the fence and what looks like a low wooden rail is actually land belonging to the Environment Agency. And it is their fence that they want to keep it private.

Part 2   The Source to Lionel Avenue

I have numbered all the photos on each of the Google maps. They are hard to see on this blog, but they are all in an album on my Google Photos. Or press on the photo to enlarge.

Photos 1 and 2 are those above. Photo 3 below is taken from where the brook goes under Lionel Avenue, actually next door to Number 60. 

Part 3     Lionel Avenue to Aylesbury Road

Photos 4 to 7 below are taken from footpaths in the countryside between Lionel Avenue and Aylesbury Road.

Photos 8 and 9 below are from where the brook goes under Aylesbury Road.

Part 4   Aylesbury Road to Weston Turville Reservoir

Photos 10 to 12 below are where the brook runs alongside Halton Lane.

Photos 13 and 14 are where the brook turns sharp left. It actually splits with some of the water going straight on and some diverted left.

Photos 15 to 19 follow the brook's progress alongside the footpath on its way to Weston Turville Reservoir.

Photos 20 below is where the brook goes under the access path from the entrance to the reservoir on World's End Lane.

After a a short distance, the brook turns away to cross fields as photo 21 below.

Part 5    Weston Turville Part 1

Photos 22 to 25 are where I followed the brook on a path to the church.

The brook then reaches Church Walk, the single track road to St Mary the Virgin Church. Photos 26 and 27 are taken from either side of the road.

The following photos 28 to 31 are from four separate footpaths from Church Lane that cross over  the brook .

Part 6   Weston Turville Part 2

Photo 32 is where Wendover Brook passes the private track at the far side of the very end of Mill Lane. 

It then passes under Anstey Brook as photos 33 and 34.

And then runs alongside Brook End as photos 35 to 38.

Part 7    Brook End to Bear Brook

Photo 40 shows where the brook has gone under Brook End. 

Photos 41 and 42 are either side of the entrance into Aylesbury Rugby Club.

I then had to cross over Weston Road each time to take  photos 43 to 45 as the brook runs alongside the road and the path is on the other side.

Photo 45 below is where the brook turns sharp left to track across fields.

The brook reappears near the end of Aylesbury Road. It had followed a farm track (shown on the very right of the photo 46 above)  to reach the barrier where it goes under the main road.

It was difficult to see where it came out on the other side of Aylesbury Road, so photo 47 below is the last we see of Wendover Brook. 

The brook must go under the new A41 by-pass (photo 48 below) and join the main Bear Brook stream on the other side where there is no access. It's a shame we cannot see where it ends. Bear Brook goes on to Aylesbury and eventually the River Thame as the last photos below.

Below is the full photo from Bear Brook and Wendover Brook Water Body.

And finally "River Thame - Aston Rowant and Chilterns Spring Line Villages on astonrowant.wordpress.com/riverthame/.