Second Runs indeed!

Some amazing films from Central Europe 1969-71 – once banned for a whole generation, then hailed and garlanded with praise and prizes post-1989 – have resurfaced during the new millennium as DVDs. These, along with fine extras, booklets, commentaries and interviews, stem from a company called Second Run, which should be congratulated and supported.

Two Czech gems, first of all. Jan Nemec's terrific debut Diamonds of the Night (1964). WW2 with a pair of young men escaping from a deportation train. Gritty B&W cinematography and a physically gruelling yet hallucinatory experience throughout its very economical running time. Nemec was only 28, and his career suffered badly after the 1968 Soviet invasion. He was allowed to leave, to France in 1974, had a difficult period there and went to the USA – since when, apart from a credit as consultant on The Unbearable Lightness Of Being, his career unfortunately seems to have almost petered out.

The Ear (Ucho) (1970) by an older film maker Karel Kachyna, is if anything even more harrowing and technically accomplished. This is a ferocious masterpiece (think of one of Ingmar Bergman's dissections of a marriage, plus a strong anti-totalitarian theme!) Time Out called it "by far the best of the Czech movies banned when Dubcek was toppled in 1969… the bitterest and most scathing account of what it takes to get ahead in a Communist bureaucracy." It's also one of the earliest but still most frightening, concise and creepily effective films about bugging: by comparison, movies like The Conversation and The Lives Of Others seem unconvincing commercial compromises that use well-known actors and reach neatly reassuring middle-of-the road conclusions. Kachyna (1924-2004) stayed in Czechoslovakia, despite this, his best work, being banned until after the Velvet Revolution, 20 years later. He then got his old job back at Prague Film Academy and made features and TV films till his death, though never with the force, assurance or eventual success of The Ear, which like Nemec's film belatedly won prizes at festivals here and there when it resurfaced…

A few excellent Czech filmmakers such as Jiri Menzel of Closely Observed Trains also stayed put, experiencing many difficult years of state disapproval, limbo and/or censorship; others, like Forman and Passer, took off via France and New York and ended up in Hollywood, with varying degrees of success. Best of all their emigré products is perhaps the finest film Ivan Passer ever directed, a poignant and gripping thriller called Cutter's Way (1981). It's adapted from a neglected noir classic, Newton Thornburg's novel Cutter And Bone: both film and book are highly recommended and both have stood the test of time, like all the works mentioned above.

Last but by no means least, the Polish director Andrzej Zulawski's stunning debut, an original masterpiece from 1971, The Third Part Of The Night. In superb colour, and with some quite extraordinary handheld camerawork (which incidentally, doesn't give you a headache, despite the fact that there was no steadicam then, and cameras weighed a ton!), this is a terrifying and terrific piece of work. Supervised by the great Andrzej Wajda – who had supported and worked with so many contemporaries and younger colleagues from the famous Lodz film school, Polanski, Munk, etc – TTPOTN seems hallucinatory enough, but is actually almost documentary to the core. In fact, this film, co-written by Zulawski and his father Miroslaw, is closely based on the latter's horrific wartime experiences. (Certain sequences involving lice, for instance, are not for the squeamish: if Lautréamont were a filmmaker alive today, this section of the film, and its apocalyptic, anti-authoritarian, sardonic tone would surely have appealed to him!) But it seems that Zulawski, born in the 1940s and thus the youngest of these three masterly Central European film directors, then ran into career problems similar to those encountered by most of the other filmmakers mentioned above. By all accounts he has never quite matched this first, shattering classic. He too moved to Paris and continues to make films there. I've ordered a copy of Possession (1981) his horror movie featuring Isabelle Adjani, Sam Neill and Fassbinder's Margit Carstensen, and shall expect some effective grand guignol gruesomeness, even if it can't rival his brilliant early achievement.

We watched these three superb works recently, having borrowed them from our excellent city Library. So, little Cleggerons and Camerleggs, whichever ambitious and uninformed bureaucrat within your fudging "coalition" is charged with cutting supposedly expensive luxuries – those perceived as soft targets (eg. literature and the performing arts) – kindly do not chop, or further squeeze, funding for the UK's hitherto wonderful public libraries! And on the subject of libraries and library borrowing, why be so miserably stingy year by year with Public Lending Right? If, in times of such austerity, the UK can still afford to finance distant, interminable and pointless wars, and to pour money into really useful and/or deprived areas like Trident, banker's bonuses, and the Pope's forthcoming visit, then why should books and films – so much less destructive and more enjoyable – miss out?

Politicians And Significant Others

Both of us snailed and emailed letters – to our recently re-elected New Labourite MP Ben Bradshaw and to new Deputy PM Libdem Nick Clegg. And we both subsequently received two-page, very nearly identical replies, electronic and hardcopy! How interesting that this 'form-letter' or official handout statement, or whatever one can call such a fudging, bland piece of hypocritical guff, should be the 'official' cross-party, Whitehall line on… guess what? The IDF's brutality toward the Palestinians and against anyone trying to bring humanitarian aid to refugees, of course!

Never mind the killings and ill-treatment of those on board the recent flotilla headed for Gaza, never mind the continuing illegality of Israel's occupation-annexation of the so-called Holy Land, international critics can continue to be ignored and/or conveniently dismissed as antisemitic, if there is even a whisper of protest against Zionist attacks on defenceless civilians.

As to the vicious racism and destruction involved, I can recommend Ben White's extraordinary and illuminating book, Israeli Apartheid: A Beginner's Guide. Anyone interested in the Middle East and indeed in the future of world peace should read it! A review of the book originally caught my eye when I saw it in that fearless and provocative publication The Spokesman, founded by Bertrand Russell. Its distinguished editor for many years, Ken Coates, died only a couple of weeks ago. He will be remembered with considerable affection and respect by those who never actually met him, among them myself. I've contributed (haiku) to the magazine for some years and have been reading it for longer. I did correspond with Ken though: as with his writings in general, even his briefest communications radiated humour, compassion, dislike of lies and injustice, and an outspoken honesty. The decent, uncompromising and uncompromised Left will miss him greatly.

Berlin and on

A wonderful swelteringly hot week in Berlin a month ago. Our artist friends' flat in Friedrichshain, in the former East, overlooks a big tree-lined square, on which there are two huge markets every week. Cafés, bars and excellent small restaurants surround the square itself, the streets are cobbled, and there are more bikes, tattoos and original outfits to be seen than anywhere else I've been in the last twenty years. Art galleries, craft shops, studios abound – mostly friendly and unpretentious: in the best sense, its a cheap and cheerful area, as is the city as a whole (about half the price of living in London, and the UK generally!) As for the exhibitions and museums, these were wonderful, and given our limited time and energy, we had to pick and choose carefully. No question about our two top favourites, however: the largest show of Frida Kahlo's work ever assembled, on at the Martin-Gropius-Bau, and well worth an hour's queuing to get in. And the Käthe Kollwitz house and museum. Wonderful gutsy leftwing women and great artists both, by any standards. Also, elsewhere, in a couple of mixed exhibitions of well-known 2oth century names (Gabo, Dix, Beckmann, Grosz, Heartfield etc) we discovered a third terrific woman artist, whose life-span was almost exactly the same as dear Jean Rhys's: this was Jeanne Mammen (1890-1976), well worth checking out.

Catching Up

Why haven't I blogged since last December?! Well, real life as opposed to screen-life caught up with me, I turned 70 in January and enjoyed a terrific party (about 80 people in a small house) organised for me by dear Maggie. She also completely surprised me with a wonderful festschrift cum birthday book to which 40 friends old and new contributed: this she produced brilliantly, in around 3-4 weeks just before xmas '09, with invaluable aid from the indefatigable Francophile and techno-wiz Ken Clay, editor of the wonderful Crazy Oik magazine, and webmeister co-editor of the equally splendid Penniless Press.

All this took quite some time to recover from. Then a couple of extra birthday treats, long- anticipated and early booked in 2009 – for January (Lisbon) and April (St Petersburg) – never got off the ground (thanks to snow and volcanic ash respectively). These unavoidable cancellations resulted both times in unexpected but delightful stays in London, with M and I ligging around, seeing various friends, exhibitions etc and enjoying some unplanned and very pleasant times. 

Since then, a stream of visitors to Exeter from France, Germany, Australia, and elsewhere, have made for a highly social year, all of which excitement hasn't prevented my writing quite a few new poems. A sizeable pamphlet of new haiku will come next, written since Haiku Of Five Decades last year, while a further full collection covering the last few years is also ready.

Less happily, quite a few friends, relatives and acquaintances have died during these last few months and various others are being treated for serious illnesses. (New Year resolutions to drink less and walk more, kept sporadically: seize the time is more like it!) But the year had begun dismally with massacres in Gaza; now, as May turns to June, the IDF has just attacked the convoy of peace ships, the international flotilla attempting to bring humanitarian aid and supplies to an area that has so long been suffering under Zionist blockade. Deaths and more suffering are the inevitable result, and the Israelis don't seem to realise or care that their illegal occupation and cruel bullying tactics continue to lose them the goodwill of most of the rest of the world. On which sombre note I'll close: I've signed petitions, written to Messrs Clegg, Hague and others, but verbal tut-tutting is not enough. What else can be done? BDS for a start – Boycotts, Divestment, Sanctions – yet have our (or any) politicians the guts to demand or organise such action against Israel? I doubt it, though similar moves helped bring an end to apartheid in South Africa. Meanwhile we must all protest and hope brute force does not in the long run prevail.

horrifying movies and horrible errors

A friend from our King's College Cambridge days, who later became an eminent Professor of Psychology, recently sent me a dvd of M R James's finest ghost story, Oh Whistle And I'll Come To You, My Lad. This was made for BBC tv in the 1960s (minus the first and last 2 words of the original title), filmed quite beautifully at that, in monochrome and presumably on a minimal budget, by yet another Cambridge alumnus, Jonathan Miller. It's short, only 50 minutes or so, but a terrific performance by Michael Hordern is central to the film, which manages to be creepy, poetic, imaginatively suspenseful, psychologically fascinating and true to its original source. Dr Miller, before he turned into the portentous panjandrum of latter years, must have grown sick of being lauded for Beyond The Fringe and this marvellous little film… But those were after all perfect achievements of a high order, unusually provocative entertainments at their best. So it was good to see the film again after so long, and to realise that over two generations later it hadn't dated one iota – crisp and creepy as ever: thanks for sending it, Dr Halliday!

Contrast this minor classic with a "major movie" such as The Shining, which I also saw again the other day. Inflated budget and length, very high-tech for its day, boasting a riveting if outrageously over the top central performance from Jack Nicholson, in full colour, full volume all the way… And yet by the end, how disappointing, even boring. Certainly unsatisfactory and short on shock, with every gory episode overdone and underlined. Stanley Kubrick now seems a rather overrated director, apart from his earlier monochrome, low-budget movies, Killer's Kiss, The Killing and Paths of Glory. These, though derivative in various respects, all packed a punch and showed imagination alongside the hysteria and violence depicted. High quality black and white photography and youthful energy won the day. Money, attention to detail and stars and gloss can't rescue The Shining from being something of a horrid mess – as were Kubrick's later films, for the most part. But those early, less pretentious works should be enjoyed and remembered however, along with the grotesque fantasy Dr Strangelove. He also offered some friendly support and encouragement to genuine talents like Stuart (Overlord) Cooper and Kevin Brownlow during their own youthful directorial struggles: Stanley K. seems to have been, by different accounts, either a warmly generous, meticulous craftsman or a coldly dictatorial, eccentric obsessive. But then perhaps nearly all the most individual filmmakers display a wild and weird mixture of divergent and/or extreme character traits?

two kinds of reading

Last week, 3rd December, I did a 2nd launch of Haiku Of Five Decades at Joel Segal's excellent secondhand  bookshop in the high street of Topsham, that very attractive if somewhat dormitorial estuary suburb of Exeter. This proved very enjoyable, and though the rain was lashing down (it's rained almost every day and night this month, so far!) about 40 people showed up during the evening and quite a few bought quite a few books. Good to see some old friends among the new faces, some of whom hadn't been able to get to the earlier event in mid-October. And I managed to confirm what my late poet friend Patricia Beer, a stickler for proper West Country pronunciation, once told me years ago, that it's "Tops-Ham" not "Topshum"!

As for the second kind of reading, the kind one does by and for and to oneself, I caught up recently with Edward W. Said's last and alas posthumously published book, On Late Style. This wonderful collection of essays on music and literature, is as stimulating, wise and concise as you'd expect from such a prolific, perceptive and committed writer. The concept of 'lateness' in art that Said tries to define and describe includes the likes of Richard Strauss, Glenn Gould, Jean Genet, Cavafy, Adorno, Beethoven, Mozart, Visconti, Lampedusa and others. Said, as Palestinian, polymath and insightful cultural critic, was a truly impressive figure who will be much missed. This unusual book is part of an enduring and properly provocative testament: highly recommended!

politics and film

I was bewildered today (Friday 27th Nov) to hear several mentions on Radio 4 and the World Service of "the Israeli-led blockade [sic] of Gaza".  Dare one ask precisely who is 'following' where the Israelis lead? Seems like it's the BBC!

But enough on corrupt politics, dodgy reporting and rhetoric, and the manifest abuses of power: let's have far more political honesty, humanism and cinematic artistry. In these last three areas a couple of previously rare, quite brilliant screen gems by Kevin Brownlow and Andrew Mollo are now available in painstakingly restored copies on DVD, along with some witty and revealing interviews. The two films in question are It Happened Here (1956-64, not released till 1966)) and Winstanley (1975) With beautiful black and white cinematography, and movingly acted, for the most part by non-professionals, both films reflect the idealism, energy and youthful enthusiasm of their makers. Yet it's amazing that either was made at all: what with minuscule budgets, low or no salaries, and meticulous, authentic period-design (for the 1940s and 1640s respectively), and filming always on location and generally part-time! Indeed, it's clear that their making involved a quasi-fanatical commitment and obsessive determination against the odds. As to the dramatic subject matter of these films, whose own production histories are as extraordinary and fascinating as the violent eras of upheaval they deal with, I'll say no more here except to urge everyone to make the effort to see them. They surely rank with the best and most poetic British cinema of the past 50 years, alongside the work of such creative, independent spirits as Bill Douglas and Terence Davies.

Also recommended are Kevin Brownlow's memoir, How It Happened Here (1968), recently reissued, and his masterly personal chronicle of the silent screen, The Parade's Gone By (1968). The former relates how the 18 year old Brownlow came to make his highly original first feature and what happened to it. The latter book, a monumental and impeccably researched work containing unique stills and interviews with all sorts of stalwarts of the silent movies, from stars to stand-ins and technicians, belongs in every filmlover's library. I remember reading the MS. for a publisher in the late 1960s: despite my most enthusiastic recommendation, I couldn't persuade that particular firm to publish Kevin's manuscript. No, it was 'uncommercial', 'too long', 'too limited in appeal', etc… Luckily a rival firm soon snapped up this wonderful book, which has remained in print ever since and taken its rightful place as one of a handful of indispensable accounts of the pioneers of cinema.