auntie Beeb cops out again

The latest example/victim of the compromises that the cop-out mentality involves was a play last Saturday night in the regular weekend drama series – The Wire, on Radio 3. The Radio Editor of the BBC's official Radio Times magazine selected this play, Zurich, as her Choice of the Day, ending her mini-essay with the words "it's an ultimately uplifting story". This, along with the play's title, was the giveaway that must have tipped off many listeners to the cop-out ending. Why then bother to listen, albeit incredulously, to a threequarter hour play trundling towards a foregone conclusion?

We stuck with the play, however, because the "issue", (ghastly overworked word) which it tried none too well to dramatise, was, and remains, an important one, and not just for older generations. Two fortyish Irish guys – Paul wheelchair bound, paraplegic for 16 years after a car crash, accompanied by his longtime best friend Aidan – travel to Zurich for an AC/DC concert. Paul has told neither mother nor friend that he's decided to end his life at a Swiss clinic. (Did we hear 'Gravitas' substituted for 'Dignitas'?) In the course of the play Paul tells Aidan and us quite insistently that his life is limited, painful, humiliating, lonely and depressing; he feels as a severely disabled person that he has not had and cannot have, any meaningful relationships, and has absolutely nothing to look forward to except more long years of even worse suffering.

But Aidan ducks out of doing the brave, moral and decent thing – to comfort and help his friend get to the clinic and offer support on that final journey; instead, he angrily lectures him and promptly takes a taxi to the airport. Then, in a completely unlikely last-minute volte-face, Aidan dashes back to the clinic and arrives in the nick of time before the irreligious cynic can quaff the hemlock. Aidan bursts in without demur and persuades Paul, in a couple of preachy minutes flat, not to persevere with his long-considered and courageous decision to put an end to what's been a meaningless continuance rather than a meaningful existence. And so back they go to Ireland, no problem. "Just like that", as Tommy Cooper would have said.

Well, how nice and neat and safe and heartwarming! We can all switch off and feel better. But what of proper, serious debate – what price good sense, humanity and reason? 'Dignity in (not) Dying' it certainly wasn't – more like 'Humiliation in Going-on-living, or Larkin's "Man hands on misery to man". (Incidentally, Zurich came across as predictably patronising and sanctimonious towards disabled people. But noticing the preponderance of Irish names involved – author, production credits etc – one rather suspects some religious pressure somewhere behind the scenes and the unconvincingly pat and moralistic 'argument'.)

On another note, if you ever listen to Feedback on BBC R4 you'll rapidly conclude it's a waste of time contacting Auntie with even the slightest whiff of criticism. Listeners invariably get fobbed off with some statement that exudes defensive smugness, rather than any logical explanation, apology or (gawd forbid!) admission that a programme, producer or presenter might possibly have got something wrong, might perhaps have been partial, biassed or mistaken. Political correctness, waffle and avoidance of what the managers perceive as potentially controversial, will always win out.

It leads to a feeble style of broadcasting – driven by a seemingly general dread of causing offence to somebody somewhere, to anybody anywhere! – and it has its inevitable consequences of fudging and cant. These are exemplified by numerous trailers and warnings about the strong language and possibly distressing issues raised in the programmes to follow. When there's a really important issue – life and death – to deal with, we deserve more honesty or at least something better than what we're currently being fed.

death of a master

Upon the sad demise, a week or so ago, of one of the world's last indisputably great film directors, I'd meant to post some sort of comment, however sadly inadequate. But I did read some decent Obits, and meanwhile have been entranced, watching again (or in some cases seeing for the first time), various masterpieces (The Travelling Players; Landscape In The Mist, etc) by the man who was Greece's finest filmmaker, Theo Angelopoulos. At least he'd have had the brief satisfaction of seeing his films collected as dvds in three boxed sets, the last of which is generally available this month.

What a way to go, however! Angelopoulos was aged 75, directing his new film in Piraeus, when run down by a motorcyclist who turns out to have been an off-duty policeman. Road accidents of one kind and another, so often seeming absurd and arbitrary as well as particularly shocking, have curtailed any number of formidable creative talents (Nathanael West, Camus, Pollock, Clifford Brown, W.G. Sebald etc): you're left thinking 'I wish there'd been more time, more work, more opportunity to relish what might have come next'.

Still, the legacy of Angelopoulos, those long, slow, remarkable and remarkably complex films, may now be properly assessed. He was a true original, and anyone interested in the art of cinema will be fascinated by his work. You don't have to know about Greek myths, history or politics, but the more you do know or care to find out about Greece's past and troubled present, the better. If you want lots of violence, fast editing, loud music and all the other obvious and banal aspects of the current mainstream, you won't like Angelopoulos's unique style or his exquisite and original use of landscape, and the emotion and poetry will pass you by. Time and patience are required in order to appreciate to the full the imaginative and innovative cinema of Angelopoulos: one is drawn into these lives and images gradually, frame by frame… And like all true artists he creates an atmosphere, a special world that fascinates and almost hypnotizes: it's a genuine and extraordinary experience that, as they say 'grows on you', and one which you can grow with. 'Caviare to the general' maybe, but a taste very well worth acquiring.

all Allen ain't

What a marvel is The Shop Around The Corner (d. Ernst Lubitsch, 1940)! Found a copy of this classic (Korean, what's more) in yet another recently opened local charity shop, for just a quid. The young James Stewart is the perfect foil for Margaret Sullavan (1911-60), that unique and highly original performer, who made a successful if relatively brief career on both stage and screen. Sullavan is now largely forgotten, except by older film fans: she projected a gutsy yet vulnerable, breezy but endearing charm. Her private life however, like that of many another Hollywood star away from the unreal celluloid world, seems to have been genuinely troubled – three marriages, ill-health, increasing deafness and death by her own hand… Her admirer Louise Brooks, another complex character and terrific actress, praised "that wonderful voice of hers – strange, fey, mysterious – like a voice singing in the snow."

Sullavan and Stewart are quite wonderful together, and the supporting cast, especially Frank Morgan as the shop owner, are also superb. This sublimely bitter-sweet – not quite screwball, if splendidly quickfire – comedy now seems perhaps closer to Renoir than Hawks or Preston Sturges, but with delightful hints of all three. Lubitsch directed with what was at the time labelled his 'touch' – a style full of feeling, European wit and elegance and just a dash of cynicism.

My favourite Lubitsch film, if anything even more enjoyable, remains the hilarious To Be Or Not To Be (1942), starring the lovely and equally ill-fated Carole Lombard. This, for whatever devious reasons of copyright or studio archival manoeuvres, seems currently unavailable. But maybe I'll be lucky enough to truffle out a Korean copy of this one too, and in some other inviting shop around the corner?

Allen's angst

The decline of Woody Allen in recent years has been pitiful. I watched in disbelief (luckily having copped a freebie copy) Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008) – a dismal waste of time, money and talent. Does this man inhabit the real world or, come to that, his well-heeled American tourist's idea of Europe? This dreary little travel brochure and vehicle for product-placement lacks wit, irony or any hint of humour or realism. Arty types and intellectuals, according to him, are all beautiful people who live in beautiful villas, drive flashy sportscars and fly private planes. And they all have unlimited time and money with which to indulge themselves. We're invited to admire them and empathize with their trivial love-lives. Their life-styles seem to have been inspired by Hello – or in this case perhaps, Ola! – while the clumsy cinematography and deadpan voice-over (not by Allen, and anyhow utterly banal) do nothing but expose some wooden performances. (Only the talented Rebecca Hall emerges from this cinemuddle without damaging her rising reputation.) Mysteriously, this trite tripe was an 'Official Cannes Selection'. But talking of damaging one's reputation, maybe Allen should simply pack it in now, while the going's not so good.

knife edge of hysteria

Further to my previous comments about great B&W photography in Bela Tarr's MFL, the excellent work of Ernest Laszlo (another Hungarian, this time a long-term Hollywood emigré) in The Big Knife, 1955, is to be cherished. Robert Aldrich's terrific drama, which I saw in student days and had not seen since, seems better now than it ever did. Aldrich, once affectionately termed by French critics 'le gros Bob', was one of the very best Hollywood directors, specialising in gritty if not brutal movies about survival against the odds. Working mainly within the system, Aldrich produced some genre classics - war, westerns, noirs etc - including some of my absolute favourites in those fields: Attack, Apache, The Last Sunset, Ulzana's Raid, The Grissom Gang, Emperor Of The North, and the quite superb Kiss Me Deadly. You'd expect no less from a man who'd worked with Welles, while the physicality, the brilliantly expressive, almost expressionist, camera angles, the almost if not quite OTT performances, all seem perfectly right in these films' contexts.

As for The Big Knife itself, it features a matchless cast: the inimitable Jack Palance in one of his finest and most gripping dramatic roles; well supported by Ida Lupino, Shelley Winters, Everett Sloane, Wendell Corey, and Jean Hagen (she of "Aah jest caint stann um" fame in Singing In The Rain). And of course, there's Rod Steiger with a strange haircut and a deaf-aid, ranting and raving away as a studio mogul who's an unholy mix of Messrs Mayer and Cohn… Yet his "hammy outrageousness" (Time Out) somehow works when set against Palance's obdurate intensity.

Here's fear and loathing in LA, via the flawed but often brilliant Clifford Odets! His "wordy and stagebound script" was nonetheless considered (also by Time Out) "intellligent and literate", and it seems in hindsight a rather accurate depiction of Fifties America, cold war paranoia and all.

Early last year we saw a stage production of Odets's first success, Waiting For Lefty, and this Thirties piece seemed both curiously timely and dated. The powerful verbal gifts (along with the accompanying torrential verbosity) retained much of their force, while most of the occasional sentimental blemishes could be overlooked: Odets's socialism, like his heart, was in the right, or rather the left, place. Alas, by the end of the McCarthy era, Odets had sold out and become an extremely well-rewarded Hollywood hack, albeit one of the best around: see also Sweet Smell Of Success, an equally fine, equally hysterical film scripted by him a couple of years after TBK.

Unfortunately, just like Aldrich himself, whose later output declined and became slickly commercial (remember The Dirty Dozen and what happened to the later careers of Mesdames Davis and Crawford?) Odets went for the easy money flowing down the mainstream. But he remained, according to Jean Renoir, a decent, warm and very generous friend. In My Life And My Films (1974) Renoir writes movingly of their friendship and Odets's last days. He praises Odets's only foray into directing - the very odd None But The Lonely Heart, which starred an absurdly OTT Cary Grant plus dreadful cockney (not even Bristolian!) accent. This praise was, one feels, down to Renoir's own comradeship and innate generosity, rather than a true reflection of an interesting failure: surely NBTLH is not, as anyone who's seen this muddled piece will agree, any sort of "masterpiece"? Still those were times of exaggeration, days of hysteria and suspicion, when friendship accorded to outsiders, foreigners and exiles in Hollywood was in short supply. Renoir simply notes that Odets was "like everyone representative of his period… a victim of the anti-communist obsession". The paranoia and blame of that time are in impressive and riveting evidence in The Big Knife.

cutting edge of pseudery

What fairly recent movie garnered the following puffs on its dvd case? ("Mesmeric… This is film noir as metaphysical poetry… Extraordinary black and white camerawork" - Time Out. "extraordinary" - The Observer. "compelling" - Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian. "majestic and mysterious"- Scotland on Sunday. "mesmerising… Swinton is just one highlight" - Jonathan Romney, Independent on Sunday.) And was a Cannes festival selection, at that? Answer: The Man From London, directed by Bela Tarr, 2007.

I recalled struggling with his earlier four hour effort, the dismal Satantango, whose opening sequence, a dark wet farmyard somewhere in Hungary, lasts for about half an hour – during which time we see some murky outbuildings, cattle crossing the mud in the wind and rain and nothing much else of any excitement or edification. We found ourselves eventually forced to fastforward in disbelief, and realised that nothing much else did happen during this interminable and lugubriously boring saga: nothing like our own dear and multiply-plotted Archers!

Anyhow, in all fairness, I checked out of our library this more recent film, because the time listed was only "90 mins approx". Also, The MFL was based on an author I admire, Simenon: this promised to be an unexpected marvel of psychological accuracy and gripping too. And the excellent and risktaking Swinton is always worth watching… Ah what a disappointment! The opening shot, up down and across, back and forth, along a ship's hull at night, was indeed leisurely. Thereafter the trades description act should have been invoked: a total of two hours ten minutes is not quite "90 mins approx", while all those carefully-selected, grandiose M-words and laudatory adjectives from various supposedly intelligent critics, from "mesmeric" onward, should have tipped us the wink. We dutifully stayed the course, again with considerable exasperation: was it really possible for any filmmaker to be so impossibly, wilfully slow, to show such complete and utter disdain for both narrative and audience?

Absurd multilingual dubbing and absolutely ludicrous 'storyline' didn't make for a riveting experience. Why should the extremely aged retiree Scotland Yard inspector, the eponymous TMFL, who speaks with the voice of Edward Fox, cross the Channel to investigate a missing sixty thousand quid – from a theatre box office of all unlikely places? He ignores a corpse in the harbour (Bastia apparently, rather than Belgium) and finally allows a murderer – the killer of the first killer, if you follow me – to go free with a large wodge of money and a pat on the back. (Tarr very much?) I don't think I have spoilt the film by hinting at the sheer absurdity of it all. Yes, it's indeed beautifully lit and photographed, but so what? Every face and object, longshot or closeup, is lingered on interminably, for no discernible purpose. A frustrated stills photographer Tarr may be or might have been, but an auteur he ain't. A pretty pretentious interview with The Man From Hungary is included as an 'extra'. This confirmed my misgivings and resolve never to watch another such piece of stodgily intellectualised boloney ever again. Life is too short, and good art is still shorter, but the Bela experience is far too long: beware and avoid!

those Quays!

The Quay twins, never to be confused with the awful Krays, conceived and directed in 1995 the unique and extraordinary Institute Benjamenta, or This dream people call human life. It was great to catch up with this rare gem a few days ago (thanks once again to Exeter's fine film library!) in its new dual format edition. This includes an informative booklet and lots of fascinating extras – several other shorts by the Brothers Q, and interviews with them and the exceptional actors Mark Rylance and Alice Krige, who star in this wonderful film. Of course the fact that it's B&W and drawn from the weird works of the German-Swiss author Robert Walser (1878-1956), whose latter years, from 1929, were spent in a mental hospital, may discourage your average browser in search of digital tricks and zappy sledgehammer editing, but the loss will be theirs.

The distinguished British poet and translator Christopher Middleton refers to Walser's "charmed ironic clownishness", and certainly the Quays seem to capture this. "An exquisitely realised anti-fairytale, a fragile world shimmering with luminous energy and hypnotic beauty" says blurb, and for once that's spot on. I should think anyone who likes Beckett, Kafka and Keaton would love this film about a very peculiar training school for servants, but it's a truly independent and original piece of cinema. Gottfried John, a Fassbinder stalwart, also plays an important part, and the film is mysterious, comical, oneiric, surreal and gorgeous to watch. Those who have savoured the strangely distinctive, sometimes nightmarish animation and the singularly odd puppetry and dreamscapes of the Quays' earlier films – their adaptations of Bruno Schulz for example – and their affinity with Central European filmmakers like Svjankmaier and Borowczyk, will need no further recommendation.