two oldies but goodies

Two amazing movies: one of the best ever documentaries; one of the most visually exquisite films ever made. First, The Thin Blue Line (1988), directed by Errol Morris the true story of the murder of a policeman in a Texan town. A grim and absolutely riveting chunk of lowlife exposing a dreadful miscarriage of US justice, it involved a mixture of corruption, malice and incompetence that resulted in the wrong man being convicted and despatched to Death Row. Uniquely and admirably, the filmmaker's dogged investigation into this crime proved instrumental in the innocent's belated release and the actual killer's eventual arrest and conviction. Apart from its vital crusading element, the film is brilliantly assembled – interviews trenchant and edgy, photography, editing and music all terrific. (The latter is by Philip Glass, what's more!) Gripping, grotesque and often blackly humorous, it's an indictment of ignorance, prejudice and the complete folly of judging by appearances.

A very different but equally extraordinary picture is Színdbad (1971), the wonderful Hungarian film directed by ill-fated, highly talented Zoltan Huszárak – dead at fifty and still scarcely known outside his homeland. The excellent Second Run outfit this year released a dvd of his single masterpiece: it's a film of breathtaking visual beauty, humorous, poignant and in the best sense truly colourful. In just 90 minutes, the eponymous protagonist is shown reflecting on his life of sensual indulgence: memories of food and women predominate, since Színdbad's a greedy connoisseur of both. Yet the singleminded pursuit of pleasure can't ever distract him from the awareness of time passing and of ageing, nor from the inevitability of that final encounter which always comprises the last voyage of every Sinbad. The film adapts some fictions dating from 1911-1912 by a well-known Hungarian author Gyula Krúdy – poetic, avant-garde for their time and, by reputation, extremely difficult to translate. It seems though that Huszárak accomplished the near-impossible in movie terms: if the narrative on first viewing appears baffling here and there, this stunning film absolutely holds the interest throughout. Spellbinding colour photography and editing, a fine central performance, and some of the strangest and most lingeringly beautiful images and sequences ever: think Ophuls, Renoir, Michael Powell, than whom there's no higher praise!

admirations and qualifications

I'm a great admirer of Terence Davies and his extraordinary films and have told him so in the past, but The Deep Blue Sea is a sad miscalculation, curate's egg if ever there was! There's a wonderful cast, giving uniformly excellent performances, as one would expect from a lineup that includes Simon Russell Beale, Rachel Weisz, Tom Hiddleston and, in support, Barbara Jefford and Ann Mitchell… But, but, but – why remake what was originally a somewhat thin if 'wellmade' and rather middlebrow theatre piece (by T. Rattigan), already filmed, equally unexcitingly, with Kenneth More and Vivien Leigh in 1955?

As regards recreating the immediate post-WW2 period, it's all slightly wrong: the dark interiors aren't dingy enough, the film is generally too colourful and soft-focus, while London in the late 1940s and early 50s seemed – via my own recollections of a middleclass background and upbringing there – altogether more sombre, dirty and impoverished. The film's clothes and the people wearing them invariably look too clean; the streets and bomb sites are too 'theatrically' arranged and not really squalid; the smogs and grime are missing: the glum and downbeat plot required monochrome! Weisz is too young and glamorous for the role of Hester, while the age-gap between herself and Russell Beale, playing her husband Judge Collyer, makes their earlier relationship (or 'backstory' if you prefer) altogether unlikely.

There's a flashback scene to the blitz with people sheltering in the underground, which, again, is too extended and extraneous and so seems wilful, artificial, quite the opposite of truly atmospheric. (Matthew Sweet's recent book West End Front tells fascinating tales of the toffs – among whom would surely be numbered the likes of Judge and Lady Collyer – holing out in the posher London hotels whose cellars and basements had been specially adapted for the comfort and convenience of the better-orf.) Further details are off-kilter also: jolly pub singalongs, dwelt on indulgently, ditto the opening and closing Samuel Barber stuff. Oh dear, and Weisz doesn't even smoke her cigarettes convincingly, the only minor (if important!) criticism one might make of her very fine performance…

Once again, as in my previous comments on Andrea Arnold, one must stress that every talented director has the right to come a cropper every so often! It's hard enough to raise funding for any film, fullstop, and creative spirits need to work. So the temptation to remake or adapt a classic, or some tried-and-tested vehicle for actors, must be ever-present. At least this is a watchable couple of hours, dull and a bit camp, but not out-and-out exasperating drivel like Withering Depths: try again lads and lasses, to find, fund and film something worthier of your considerable talents!

ups and downs with books and films

Julian Barnes's Man Booker win was predictable (a 'third time lucky' or consolation prize for a dependable if unexceptional veteran?), but his rather slight novel's not a patch on a longlisted debut noirish fiction by A.D.Miller Snowdrops. Barnes is a good critic of, and writer on, most things French, particularly literature, but Miller's terrific Moscow-set thriller with its chilly atmospheric descriptions, cool psychological insights and frighteningly casual brutality is very well written indeed, Graham Greene without the catholic claptrap, an uncluttered and intelligent look at current Russian society. (Maybe Snowdrops didn't have enough intellectual pretension, perhaps downgraded somewhat as a 'genre' novel, but we found it a fascinating and unputdownable read.)

Two recent films seen, by a couple of the best directors around (both women, coincidentally). Wuthering Heights (dir. Andrea Arnold), an absolute disaster, a dreadful film from what's anyhow a very over-rated novel. A friend who works in the theatre told us it was like having her face thrust in pig slurry for two hours! I suppose re Arnold and her directing of features it was "third time unlucky" and every director, however talented, has the right to try something and fail, but this was an absolute disaster with hardly any redeeming features, anachronistic to the point of absurdity. The idea of a rather sensitive black Heathcliff (a nod to updating and/or political correctness?) was simply misguided, and, given the 1820s, any such person who told his landowning 'superiors' to "Fuck off you cunts!"simply could not have existed, nor continued to exist thereafter! More generally, no one so much as shivered in all that cold and wet oop on they moors; the drippy closing song, a folk-rock indulgence was ridiculous, etc etc. But it's hardly worth serious analysis: avoid!

Lynne Ramsay's welcome return to direction, with We Need To Talk About Kevin, was something else altogether. Properly forceful and shocking. (Given a dvd of this, we were riveted, neither of us having read the book.) But we're longterm fans of the intense, statuesque and magnificent Tilda Swinton, a brilliant actress (no, not actor!) The casting was completely convincing too, all except for the husband, who – no fault of his own – looked like a bluecollar worker, someone off a building site, perhaps, and thus no intellectual or physical match for the brainy and literate Tilda character. It was never explained, either, how this taciturn geezer made his money – and there was lots of it, judging by the family's lavish home and life-style. Maybe we missed something that made sense or was explained adequately in the book, but this seemed the only flaw in a very absorbing and thought-provoking movie: recommended for those not, as they say, of nervous disposition.

travels and more films

Getting around France by SNCF, especially if you are eligible for and invest in, a Carte Senior, booking well ahead, is a very pleasant experience, easy, affordable and stress-free. Too much in our three weeks to reflect upon and write about, as yet. Highlights included the biggest ever Diane Arbus exhibition at the Jeu de Paume in Paris, and the Musée Angladon in Avignon (great collection of 19th and 20th century art, plus first editions, notebooks, sketches, MSS etc from the likes of Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Mallarmé, Verlaine, Apollinaire, Jarry, the Surrealists and best of all where I was concerned – 3 of Lautréamont-Ducasse's 7 known letters). The amazing Roman arena/amphitheatre at Nimes, and walking over the hills to the equally stunning Pont du Gard. And staying, for several days in her Provençal village house, with Jean Rhys's granddaughter: thank you, Ellen! Following which, Mourjou's (23rd?) annual chestnut festival, where we spent a wonderful week chez our old friend the grand maître of the chataigneraie, author and cheesemeister Peter Graham. Bliss: wonderful weather, great company and fantastic quality and quantity of degustations of all sorts.

Adjusting to the UK on return has proved gradual if not downright strange. But at least a couple of good films (borrowed once again from the wonderful World Cinema section of our beleaguered local library) to regale us: Larks on a string (Jiri Menzel, 1969) and Incendies (Denis Villeneuve, 2011). The first, immediately banned in his native Czechoslovakia for years, did not resurface until 1990, and caused Menzel much hassle – disrupting a career that had promised so much, with the Oscar-winning Closely Observed Trains. His colleague on both films and several later ones, the fine author Bohumil Hrabal, also suffered when the shortlived Prague spring of 1968 was followed by the brutal Soviet occupation of their country. Larks… gained an underground reputation however, and in 1990 won the Berlin Film Festival's Golden Bear. The 2011 dvd reissue, plus short interview with Jiri Menzel, is highly recommended, a very funny yet poignant and instructive little satire and a colourful (in both senses) slice of European history.

As for this year's foreign Oscar-nominated Incendies, it's closer to Greek tragedy, but set in an unspecified Middle Eastern country whose inhabitants, whether exiled or returned, cannot escape past or present conflicts and all the various dreadful legacies of violence. If that sounds solemn or 'worthy', believe me it's not! This French-Canadian-Arabic production is impeccably acted by a cast that includes both professional and non-professional actors: indeed, some of the latter are actually refugees themselves. The result, adapted from a stage play, is an extremely powerful and moving cinematic drama, full of extraordinary landscapes, faces and situations. Unmissable for anyone interested in contemporary cinema, and also including some fascinating director interviews.

A French maestro

Looking forward to another French trip in a couple of months, and meanwhile borrowed from our city library (grimly facing the threats of council and Cameronian cuts and austerities) two terrific films. Both are directed by that excellent (if still underrated – in this country at least) filmmaker Maurice Pialat (1925-2003). Pialat was one of the finest post-WW2 French auteurs, and remained a controversial figure throughout his distinguished career. The first in time, only recently available on dvd, is A Nos Amours (1983) and introduces, in her extraordinary cinema debut, the sixteen year old Sandrine Bonnaire. Bonnaire became one of the most attractive and intelligent European actresses of her generation, and this film examining a disturbed adolescence in a dysfunctional family has sensational performances by everyone involved, including Pialat himself as the father and failed patriarch, and Evelyne Ker as the mother. Bonnaire from the first to the very last frame is gorgeous and indeed unforgettable. It's a film that hasn't dated at all and packs a powerful punch, and I'm glad to have caught up with it at last. A classic!

Totally different, but also powerful and moving, is Pialat's take on Van Gogh (1991). On a second viewing, twenty years after its original release, I was struck by the superb performances, especially by Jacques Dutronc as the troubled artist. It is as it should be, an exquisitely colourful, beautifully photographed piece, full of surprises: the characters seem to live onscreen rather than 'act' in any costumed impersonation or BBC-style period drama. It's all strangely convincing, coolly framed yet highly emotional, unpredictable and always provocative.

One of the best-ever writers on cinema, David Thomson, who's invariably judicious, witty and illuminating, makes an apt final comment on Maurice Pialat in his indispensable New Biographical Dictionary of Film. Thomson links Pialat's humanist style and very distinctive approach to cinema with that of those other greats, Renoir, Ozu and Mizoguchi. Not much else to add! You can only agree with such an insightful and consistently reliable movie critic and biographer. And having now seen just four Pialat films out of what's a considerable oeuvre, I look forward to seeing as many of the others as possible.

A few more unmissables

A Separation, the excellent Iranian film which won several awards recently at the Berlin film festival, is just about faultless. It's an absolutely riveting narrative demonstrating just how an inflexible Law (whether based on religionist or state control) can wreck lives and relationships. Terrific stuff, with performances that seemed lived rather than 'acted'.

As regards recent British cinema, there are some exciting younger directors around. Try to see The Disappearance of Alice Creed, a clever, twisty indie threehander, written and directed by (30ish?) J. Blakeson, and starring Gemma Arterton – very gutsy and convincing. The film, an economical, well-paced and rather nasty kidnapping tale, seems more than timely too, given the ordeal only days ago of that wealthy young heiress in Australia!

Saw a dvd of Andrea Arnold's Fish Tank, which, like her earlier films Red Road and the award-winning short, Wasp, are mightily impressive on second viewings. What strong performances she draws from her young casts, and what a bleak and brutal Britain she exposes! Far from entertaining stuff, but completely gripping and provocative in the best sense. Only Clio Barnard's grim biographical documentary The Arbor – which recounts, via family, friends and colleagues, the truly horrific success-and-disaster-story of the late Bradford playwright Andrea Dunbar – can match Arnold's unflinching and ferocious vision. In these films are to be found a wild bunch of bright but underprivileged young women, struggling against a male-dominated society that uses, torments and rejects them. Not recommended for depressives of either sex, however!

thirty years on

In an earlier blog (20 Aug 2010) entitled Second Runs Indeed! I focussed on various central European gems from the Sixties and Seventies, films caught up with, and/or seen again, half a lifetime later. I mentioned a long unavailable classic film noir by the emigré Czech director Ivan Passer, yet another who had gravitated via France towards Hollywood after the upheavals in Europe of 1968. His quite excellent film, Cutter's Way (1981) has now re-emerged in a nice new digital form, and I had the rare pleasure of seeing it again recently, at my local Picturehouse no less. Thirty years on, it's even better than I remembered, with absolutely terrific performances by Jeff Bridges as a beach bum-gigolo, John Heard as his friend Alex Cutter, the cynical, disabled Vietnam vet and Lisa Eichhorn as Cutter's sad alcoholic girlfriend.

As well as a sardonic picture of the sunny American dream turned very dark and sour, it's a full-on noir thriller as bleak as any of those B&W classics from the Forties and Fifties. But then it's scripted from a first-rate novel, one of the most impressive postwar American prose works – Cutter And Bone, by Newton Thornburg (1973). Read the book – if you can get hold of a reprint of this grim yet drily humorous genre masterpiece – and do try to see the film while it's re-released. (Presumably there's a dvd around too?) At any rate the characterisation, dialogue and tension are gripping and the photography and editing are faultless.

An old favourite resurfaces

Just been reading 2 sharply ironic and distinctive novels, recently published in the USA, by someone I first read in the early 1960s. Albert Cossery (1913-2008) was an Egyptian author who settled in Paris after WW2, remained there for the rest of his long life and wrote in French. His short stories and novels are inimitable and as for the 2 novels I mentioned, A Splendid Conspiracy (Un Complot de Saltimbanques, 2000) and The Jokers (Violence et la Dérision, 1993), they are funny, absorbing and elegant despite their occasionally awkward or clumsy American translations. James Buchan and John Murray both recommend The Jokers, and Cossery has been translated into 15 languages and widely praised, but his earlier books have been hard to find.

On my shelves I see editions of If All Men Were Beggars (MacGibbon & Kee, UK 1957); The House of Certain Death (Hutchinson, 1947); and Proud Beggars (Black Sparrow, USA, 1981). All of them fine novels! The first Cossery work I read, Men God Forgot is an excellent short story collection which City Lights published in 1963, and it came with an enthusiastic puff from Henry Miller, who also wrote about Cossery elsewhere. It seems Albert Cossery led a rather dandified but bohemian Left Bank life: his irrepressibly nonchalant, humorous variety of cynicism admirably suits the entrancing yet satirical stories that he tells so elegantly. France and the French it seems welcomed him, as is so often – happily – the case with artistic and political exiles in Paris. Thanks to that enlightened support within Cossery's adopted country and the measure of recognition he received there, Anglophone readers too can look forward to more of Cossery's books being available before too long.

Let's hear (and see it) for Skolimowski!

Last night on BBC R3's Night Waves, what did I chance to hear, but some estimable film critics, (including Kim Newman and Iain Sinclair) lauding the rather belated re-release in cinemas, 40 years or so after its first appearance, of what they were labelling a cult masterpiece. This was none other than my own strong recommendation– see my previous blog of a day or so before – Jerzy Skolimowski's terrific film Deep End. This features Diana Dors and Jane Asher, no less, in a startlingly coloured piece of London-themed weirdness, filmed there and in Berlin. Almost sounded as if somebody out there heard my meditation about the difficulties of seeing this rare and original filmmaker's work! Good on you BFI or whoever is now distributing this film: don't miss it!

Movie treats, bread and circuses

How much longer will our excellent Exeter library be able to stock such wonderful world cinema, given the present attacks on kulchur by the ghastly koalition? Films viewed recently include La Peau Douce, an undervalued Truffaut gem from his early low-budget B&W days, starring the beauteous Françoise Dorléac, Deneuve's sister who died sadly prematurely in a car crash. And three by Mikio Naruse, the great Japanese director, each wonderfully photographed and acted, and each better than the last, in this order: Late Chrysanthemums, When A Woman Ascends The Stairs, and the quite superb Floating Clouds. (Thank you Jean Louis Gregoire for enthusing to us about him!)

And, going the rounds of picturehouses currently, there's the latest, prizewinning work from another master of world cinema, Jerzy Skolimowski. This one, Essential Killing is only 90 minutes long, and for the most part without dialogue – an absolutely gripping and indeed timely tale, in the classic 'man-on-the-run' mould. But it's riveting and original in its narrative twists and its psychological and political message. Skolimowski is another 1960s name, a Polish exile contemporary of Polanski and Zulawski (re whom, see my earlier blogs). Skolimowski was recently seen as an actor in David Cronenberg's gutwrenching thriller Eastern Promises, but I can still remember moments from a few of Skolimowski's own very quirky films. They're all quite different in style and tone, and it's a great pity they're not readily available these days or reissued on dvds. Let's hope they will be, and he has a season at the NFT. I'd like to see again, for instance – Le Depart; The Shout; Deep End; Moonlighting… All of these, spanning thirty-odd years are full of unexpected moments and a certain (very middle-European?) dark humour.

Movies and proof corrections: what better ways to avoid reading the reams of media reverence and grovelling re the recent royal nuptial nonsense? Duke and Duchess of Cambridge indeed! I think 'Duchess of Cambridge' is a title which should have been reserved for, and might especially have suited, one of the grandees of my King's College days – Dadie Rylands. (Or possibly E.M. Forster, in those days a delightful old geezer I once had tea with.) Couldn't the Pope have broken with arsy RC tradition and beatified this exquisite young couple while he was at it? Living Saints as well as style icons? If Gilbert & George are Living Sculptures, why not Saint Will & the Blessed Kate? I mean what the hell, Duke & Duchess of Cam aren't nearly exalted enough!

A further film note and a bit on Sterne

Talking of excellent films directed by Tourneur, J., I omitted to mention Cat People, another 1940s horror classic, this one starring the delectable and kittenish French actress Simone Simon. Quite a track record for a director all but forgotten these days, though treasured by every true cinephile…

Also forgot to mention that Martin Rowson has to his credit, as listed in his excellent book Stuff, a graphic novel version of Tristram Shandy. This sounds a curiously eccentric yet appropriate thing to have done. But then Laurence Sterne's influence has been widespread: his weird and hilariously experimental 'novel' seems to continue to prompt or encourage equally ambitious and/or extraordinary projects. Two dear friends of ours, who for many years ran The Mirror and The Lamp bookshop in St Ives – radio producer Jan Starink, and his late wife, the artist and prizewinning poet Gertrude Starink – spent no fewer than fourteen years translating this singular classic into Dutch. Jan is in his mid-80s now and lives in the hometown of one of our favourite artists, Hieronymous Bosch. If you should chance to read this, Jan, I raise my glass to you and wish you lots more oud genever and strong black coffee!

film demons past and present, and a fine book

Pleased to find various friends agree with my view of Night of The Demon. (A few months back the Fortean Times reviewer called it a "genre masterpiece" and awarded it 10/10!) And yes, the producer's quite unnecessary insert of the diabolical apparition was indeed the film's only false move. The director Jacques Tourneur never did put a foot (or giant claw) wrong… In fact he directed various brilliant movies, just as good in their various ways: he's what the Cahiers du Cinema crew would once have dubbed (and probably did, for all I know) "un cinéaste maudit". Tourneur's superb Caribbean horror version of Jane Eyre – I walked with a zombie – a B&W cheapie from 1943, produced by the equally original Val Lewton, I've already discussed in my book Jean Rhys revisited. And there are other Tourneur-directed gems, including 2 great noirs, well worth seeing: Out of the past, with Mitchum, Jane Greer and Kirk Douglas, and Nightfall, adapted from a David Goodis novel. These will surely delight any connoisseur of 1940s and 50s B&W cinema.

But alas for imagination, inventive low budgetry and 'less is more'! In recent years, the more graphic, highly coloured and expensively choreographed the movie violence, the less convincing it gets. Having sought out the second film of The Girl Who… trilogy (see previous blog) I must admit that The Girl Who Played With Fire is a sad disappointment. Another terrific performance from the intrepid heroine Noomi Rapace, but what with a different and not as competent a director, some poor continuity plus a risibly unlikely script and action-sequences, it's subject to the inexorable law of sequels and diminishing returns. Which is not to say I wouldn't watch part three, if only out of curiosity and admiration for the remarkable Ms Rapace, though I won't be in any rush to borrow the dvd.

More imaginative is a slow-burning, modest-budget British treat, very low-key, almost music- and action-free – Joanna Hogg's slyly satirical dissection of a posh, dysfunctional family group holidaying on the Scilly Isles, Archipelago. This concise little flick maps out its territory and sets its tone in a downbeat area somewhere between Chekhov and Eric Rohmer, but it's certainly far more involving than the latter's endlessly pretentious and miserabilist chatter! There are, too, several exquisitely revealing and embarrassing scenes involving food and mealtimes (these seemed once to be the favoured preserve of Nouvelle Vague types, e.g. that grim joker Claude Chabrol) but Joanna Hogg matches the French here. The editing and colour photography are impressive also; the faces and landscapes unfamiliar and all the better for it. Recommended.

So too is a marvellous memoir I picked up recently for a quid in a local charity shop. A hardback a few years old now but clearly unread – more's the pity – by one of my favourite cartoonists, Martin Rowson. Rowson as caricaturist is currently second only to the great Steve Bell: here, in Stuff, this graphic artist shows most of the over-hyped British wordsmiths a thing or two! Sometimes sharp as a stanley knife, sometimes poignant, often very funny and quite without sentimentality, Stuff is the work of a genuine original. There's probably a paperback around by now, and so there bloody well should be.

grim films

When grim things keep happening around the globe (Japan, Libya and Middle East), a nice slice of escapism is occasionally in order… So I can recommend a couple of quite contrasted but gruesome and compelling movies. One is a small-scale B movie in B&W from 1957, which I'd seen only in a very poor print back in the early Sixties, and was glad to view again in its recent dvd reissue. The other's a much longer, more complex and glossy colour production from 2008 which I'd avoided on its original release, feeling one should resist the extensive hype. What they have in common, other than their being based on goodish prose narratives (in English and Swedish respectively), is style, pace, fine cinematography, gripping twists and turns within the melodramatic yet just credible storylines, plus completely convincing and committed acting. Titles of these gems, half a century apart, but seeming so timeless in their effective portrayals of lurking horror? Night Of The Demon, directed by the undervalued Hollywood Jacques Tourneur, from M.R. James's story 'Casting The Runes', and The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo (from the late Stieg Larsson's novel). If you haven't seen them, don't miss!

travels in the unholy land

for this please check Maggie's blog which is http://magssjournal.blogspot.com

walking, Walken and watching

Another belated update, this time because M and I have been regularly walking around the city's "Green Circle" (15 miles worth of wonderful countryside surrounding us, via bridle-paths and footpaths and fields). This very pleasant activity has kept us happy and fit in all weathers, before we take off soon to join a small group of walkers in the West Bank. From where, eventually, we shall both blog on. Should be an interesting trip in any case.

Meanwhile 2 recommended films, both by Brit directors, excellent oddities I've recently picked up for a couple of quid apiece in local charity shops. Donald Cammell's Wild Side, starring our old favourite, the wonderfully weird Christopher Walken, well over the top as always, and especially so in this lurid little psychosexual thriller. And one from 1971, Red Sun, directed by Terence Young, a generally undistinguished action specialist (e.g. he orchestrated all the early James Bond flicks). Red Sun has the utterly superb Toshiro Mifune in vivid Eastmancolor and quite resplendent in full samurai kit. Swordsman Tosh easily steals the show from a strange international cast heavily reliant on both beef- and cheesecake – Bronson, Andress and Delon. They're all Out West, by the way, circa 1860, and this violent East-Western oater (plus railways, Mexicans and Comanches added to the mix) is nevertheless something of a neglected gem. Both these films are, you could say, colourful escapism , but thoroughly good, decadent fun for any true cinephile. Entertaining nonsense and none the worse for that.

festivities, flu, Ambit and Angela

Long lapse in the journal, or 'dear diary', aspect of this blog. Perhaps not so surprising, for after the successful book launch of Haiku At Seventy last December, as noted, came the snow and ice: minus 15 degrees just across the River Exe. Then 2 weeks of flu over xmas and my birthday, so the celebrations were necessarily scaled down. Lethargy ensued, along with the depleted energy of septuagenarianism etc.

Visitors from France, providing excellent and convivial cheer, arrived early on in the New Year, staying 10 days, a time which also proved most enjoyably inimical to writing anything here, except for a couple of miserabilist poems… We were given 2 extraordinary films, Claude Miller's Mortelle Randonnée (Deadly Run), a terrific thriller from 1982, with Michel Serrault and the wonderful Isabelle Adjani, about whom I've already raved. This sumptuously photographed and surprising movie (from Marc Behm's rather original American pulp noir) was quite a contrast with Vitaly Kanevski's gritty monochrome Russian epic, Bouge Pas, Meurs et Ressuscite! (Dont Move, Die and Rise Again!) (1989) which chronicles a nightmarishly wretched childhood in Siberian wastes. Marvellous children's performances: how do directors manage to get these non-professionals to act, or rather, exist, this way – so movingly and convincingly on the screen? The grimness though was riveting and quite relentlessly conveyed. Nothing like horrors of one kind and another to cheer one up, I always say! Read Gissing, for example; you'll feel so much better about your own health, finances, relationships and prospects etc: "there but for the grace of Fate" [certainly not god!] go we.)

Revitalised by these and other wintry experiences, I was glad of a brief London trip to see old friends Paul & Val and read at the launch of Ambit magazine's splendid issue no. 203. Apart from my own poems (of course!) there are excellent graphics and prose, and no less than 12 pages devoted to the unique American poet Fred Voss. Voss is absolutely one of a kind, and how many machinists in steel foundries are there who write anything at all, let alone such funny, moving and utterly distinctive work?

Finally, a superb concert a few nights ago, given by the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra in Exeter Cathedral, with the great Angela Hewitt playing Mendelssohn and Schumann. A nice note on which to close.