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