Literature

C S Lewis’s The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe (1950)

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Anoth­er stal­wart from my mem­o­ries of our pri­ma­ry school book­shelf, the bril­liant, ground-break­ing The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C S Lewis, pub­lished in 1950 as the first in what would become a series of sev­en, col­lec­tive­ly known as The Chron­i­cles of Nar­nia:

The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (1950)
Prince Caspi­an (1951)
The Voy­age of the Dawn Tread­er (1952)
The Sil­ver Chair (1953)
The Horse and His Boy (1954)
The Magi­cian’s Nephew (1955)
The Last Bat­tle (1956)

I can pic­ture the cov­ers of some three or four of these in my own col­lec­tion of books that I had at home, though crim­i­nal­ly, I don’t think I actu­al­ly read any of them oth­er than the TLTWATW (even the acronym is a mouth­ful). I must have done? Well per­haps, but it was a long time ago…

Still, I def­i­nite­ly read TLTWATW and I remem­ber it as a mag­i­cal expe­ri­ence. There can’t be many peo­ple who don’t know that it involves a por­tal to the realm of Nar­nia, a world of mag­ic, strange beasts and talk­ing ani­mals, found by four evac­uee chil­dren at the back of a wardrobe in their tem­po­rary guardian’s coun­try home. They find them­selves called upon by the lion Aslan to pro­tect Nar­nia from the evil White Witch and become embroiled in adven­tures that go on for years with­out affect­ing the real world’s time­line.

The sto­ry was prompt­ed by Lewis’s own host­ing of three evac­u­at­ed school­girls at his house in Ris­inghurst near Oxford, in Sep­tem­ber 1939. The expe­ri­ence prompt­ed him to begin a sto­ry, and the rest is his­to­ry. Writ­ing about it lat­er he wrote:

At first, I had very lit­tle idea how the sto­ry would go. But then sud­den­ly Aslan came bound­ing into it. I think I had been hav­ing a good many dreams of lions about that time. Apart from that, I don’t know where the Lion came from or why he came. But once he was there, he pulled the whole sto­ry togeth­er, and soon he pulled the six oth­er Narn­ian sto­ries in after him.

A num­ber of years ago I went to an inter­ac­tive event at a con­vert­ed church build­ing in Leeds in which all we par­tic­i­pants start­ed the jour­ney by walk­ing though a long line of coats and clothes in a “wardrobe” before break­ing through to a snowy land­scape peo­ple by actors play­ing the var­i­ous ani­mal char­ac­ters. Let’s read the excerpt from the book that this expe­ri­ence actu­al­ly recre­at­ed very impres­sive­ly. The chil­dren are explor­ing their new envi­ron­ment and Lucy has been left behind in one of the rooms, intrigued by a big old wardrobe which she opens and enters…

Look­ing into the inside, she saw sev­er­al coats hang­ing up — most­ly long fur coats. There was noth­ing Lucy liked so much as the smell and feel of fur. She imme­di­ate­ly stepped into the wardrobe and got in among the coats and rubbed her face against them, leav­ing the door open, of course, because she knew that it is very fool­ish to shut one­self into any wardrobe. Soon she went fur­ther in and found that there was a sec­ond row of coats hang­ing up behind the first one. It was almost quite dark in there and she kept her arms stretched out in front of her so as not to bump her face into the back of the wardrobe. She took a step fur­ther in — then two or three steps always expect­ing to feel wood­work against the tips of her fin­gers. But she could not feel it.

“This must be a sim­ply enor­mous wardrobe!” thought Lucy, going still fur­ther in and push­ing the soft folds of the coats aside to make room for her. Then she noticed that there was some­thing crunch­ing under her feet. “I won­der is that more moth­balls?” she thought, stoop­ing down to feel it with her hand. But instead of feel­ing the hard, smooth wood of the floor of the wardrobe, she felt some­thing soft and pow­dery and extreme­ly cold. “This is very queer,” she said, and went on a step or two fur­ther.

Next moment she found that what was rub­bing against her face and hands was no longer soft fur but some­thing hard and rough and even prick­ly. “Why, it is just like branch­es of trees!” exclaimed Lucy. And then she saw that there was a light ahead of her; not a few inch­es away where the back of the wardrobe ought to have been, but a long way off. Some­thing cold and soft was falling on her. A moment lat­er she found that she was stand­ing in the mid­dle of a wood at night-time with snow under her feet and snowflakes falling through the air.

The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe, book cov­er
C S Lewis
Poetry

George Herbert’s Easter Wings (1633)

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East­er is round the cor­ner once again so it’s per­haps time for a themed blog, and this week I’m tak­ing a look at the “shaped” poem East­er Wings by 17ᵗʰ cen­tu­ry poet and the­olo­gian George Her­bert. “Shape” poet­ry, AKA “con­crete” poet­ry or “pat­tern” poet­ry, is a form of visu­al poet­ry in which the words are arranged into a rel­e­vant shape, mim­ic­k­ing the poem’s sense. For exam­ple, in Alice’s Adven­tures in Won­der­land, Lewis Car­roll includes a quirky poem fea­tur­ing a mouse, shaped into the tail of a mouse (and known, pun­ning­ly, as The Mouse’s Tale):

On the face of it, shape poet­ry is indeed “quirky” and clear­ly lends itself to kids’ poet­ry or to some light-heart­ed test­ing of one’s cre­ative met­tle. How­ev­er, the con­cept dates to way, way back: the Renais­sance brought to light sev­er­al poems from ancient Greece of just such a genre, for exam­ple Sim­mias of Rhodes and his poem Wings (c. 300BC), arranged on the page to dis­play a pair of wings:

We assume that George Her­bert (1593–1633) would have been aware of the Sim­mias poem from the Greek Anthol­o­gy (a col­lec­tion of Greek poet­ry, wide­ly avail­able in schol­ar­ly cir­cles). His own attempt in Eng­lish, East­er Wings, was orig­i­nal­ly for­mat­ted sim­i­lar­ly to the above, i.e. writ­ten side­ways on fac­ing pages, which was the tra­di­tion of ancient Greek shape poet­ry, but now it’s com­mon­ly pre­sent­ed hor­i­zon­tal­ly so we can read it prop­er­ly.

Tech­ni­cal­ly, Her­bert has opened the poem with a stan­dard iambic pen­tame­ter line (5 “feet” or pairs of syl­la­bles, da dum), the sec­ond line is in tetram­e­ter (4 feet), the third trime­ter (3 feet), the fourth dime­ter (you get the idea)…then the lines build back up again to pen­tame­ter in the final line of each stan­za.

As for the sub­ject of the poem, the first stan­za deals with the Fall of Man in the first half (“lost”, “decay­ing”, “poore”), whilst in the sec­ond half the nar­ra­tor direct­ly asks God to draw him up (on angel’s wings?). The sec­ond stan­za is about the nar­ra­tor’s state of sin but also the con­cept of redemp­tion of human­i­ty through Jesus Christ, the route from alien­ation to sal­va­tion, iso­la­tion to com­mu­nion.

Lord, who cre­at­edst man in wealth and store,
      Though fool­ish­ly he lost the same,
            Decay­ing more and more,
                  Till he became
                        Most poore:
                        With thee
                  O let me rise
            As larks, har­mo­nious­ly,
      And sing this day thy vic­to­ries:
Then shall the fall fur­ther the flight in me.

My ten­der age in sor­row did beginne
      And still with sick­ness­es and shame.
            Thou didst so pun­ish sinne,
                  That I became
                        Most thinne.
                        With thee
                  Let me com­bine,
            And feel thy vic­to­rie:
         For, if I imp my wing on thine,
Afflic­tion shall advance the flight in me.

George Her­bert

Film, TV, and Theatre

Charles Laughton’s The Night Of The Hunter (1955)

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The Night of the Hunter is an Amer­i­can thriller direct­ed in 1955 by Charles Laughton (his first and only direc­to­r­i­al fea­ture) and star­ring Robert Mitchum, Shel­ley Win­ters and Lil­lian Gish. I streamed this from the Inter­net Archive site recent­ly, and what a movie it is! Mitchum excels as creepy ser­i­al killer cum self-styled preach­er-man Har­ry Pow­ell who, whilst doing some bird, catch­es wind from Death Row con­vict Ben Harp­er about a hid­den stash of mon­ey, some­where in the fam­i­ly home of Harper’s wife and two young chil­dren.

Upon release from the pen­i­ten­tiary, Pow­ell high­tails it down to the small vil­lage in the Ohio Riv­er val­ley of West Vir­ginia, where he invei­gles him­self into the com­mu­ni­ty there. He uses his tat­tooed knuck­les LOVE and HATE to tell reli­gious para­bles and hide the fact that he’s a jail­bird and a wrong ‘un. He also pro­ceeds to woo and wed Harper’s wid­ow Willa (Shel­ley Win­ters). Whilst Pow­ell has won Willa’s and the town’s trust, who assume him to be a good and pious man, young John Harp­er, on the oth­er hand, is instinc­tive­ly sus­pi­cious of the new­com­er. Nonethe­less, under Powell’s prob­ing John acci­den­tal­ly reveals that he and Pearl know where the mon­ey is hid­den, although he deter­mined­ly sticks to his vow giv­en to his father at their final meet­ing to nev­er reveal the secret.

Powell’s patience runs thin and final­ly he mur­ders Willa and dumps her body in the riv­er, telling the town that she’s scarpered for a life of sin. With the mask well and tru­ly off, the sin­is­ter Pow­ell threat­ens the chil­dren into reveal­ing that the mon­ey is hid­den inside Pearl’s doll. The kids, how­ev­er, man­age to do a run­ner with the doll and flee down­riv­er in their father’s small boat, final­ly find­ing sanc­tu­ary with Rachel Coop­er, a tough woman with a heart of gold who looks after stray chil­dren but can han­dle a gun.

Pow­ell even­tu­al­ly tracks them down, but Rachel sees through his decep­tions and runs him off her prop­er­ty with a shot­gun. Pow­ell returns after dark and an all-night stand­off ensues, dur­ing which the unflap­pable Rachel gives Pow­ell a face full of bird­shot. She sum­mons the state police, who arrive and arrest Pow­ell for Willa’s mur­der. John and Pearl spend their first Christ­mas togeth­er with Rachel and her brood of waifs and strays.

The Night of the Hunter pre­miered on July 26, 1955, in Des Moines, Iowa, but to large­ly neg­a­tive reviews. Over the years, how­ev­er, the film has been pos­i­tive­ly re-eval­u­at­ed and is now con­sid­ered one of the best films ever made. French film mag­a­zine Cahiers du Ciné­ma select­ed The Night of the Hunter in 2008 as the sec­ond-best film of all time, behind Cit­i­zen Kane. This mod­ern trail­er gives a good sense of the per­il

Robert Mitchum
Film, TV, and Theatre

Brad Bird’s The Iron Giant (1999)

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Ani­ma­tion as an art form essen­tial­ly got under­way with the advent of cel­lu­loid film in 1888. Sev­er­al dif­fer­ent ani­ma­tion tech­niques were devel­oped over the ensu­ing decades includ­ing stop-motion with objects, pup­pets, clay or cut-out fig­ures, and hand-drawn or paint­ed ani­ma­tion, the lat­ter becom­ing the dom­i­nant tech­nique of the 20th cen­tu­ry. Today of course, tra­di­tion­al ani­ma­tion has been com­plete­ly usurped by com­put­er ani­ma­tion, with the trend begin­ning with 1990’s The Res­cuers Down Under, the first film to be made with a com­put­er and no cam­era. Today’s blog sub­ject, direc­tor Brad Bird’s 1999 debut film The Iron Giant, was a hybrid of tra­di­tion­al and dig­i­tal and was a fit­ting­ly fin de siè­cle mark­er of that tran­si­tion to full-on dig­i­tal-only in the ear­ly 2000s.

The film was loose­ly based on the 1968 sci­ence fic­tion nov­el The Iron Man by future Poet Lau­re­ate Ted Hugh­es, with screen­play by Tim McCan­lies and Brad Bird. The film stars the voic­es of Jen­nifer Anis­ton, Har­ry Con­nick Jr, and Christo­pher McDon­ald, with Vin Diesel pro­vid­ing the deep metal­lic grunts of the Iron Giant him­self. Set in 1957, slap bang in the mid­dle of the peri­od of Cold War para­noia in the US, the film revolves around a young boy named Hog­a­rth Hugh­es, who dis­cov­ers and befriends a giant alien robot who has crash-land­ed from space and recent­ly arrived in the for­est near Hogarth’s house in Rock­well, Maine.

When rumours of the dis­cov­ery reach the ears of fed­er­al agent Kent Mans­ley (McDon­ald), a train of events is set in play which will even­tu­al­ly bring the might of the US Army to bear on this mis­un­der­stood alien threat. Hog­a­rth, mean­while, hav­ing learnt that the giant is in fact per­fect­ly friend­ly and means no harm, teams up with beat­nik artist Dean McCop­pin (Con­nick Jr), to thwart the author­i­ties’ attempts to find and destroy the giant, whilst simul­ta­ne­ous­ly try­ing to pro­tect his moth­er (Anis­ton) from the truth of his night­ly escapades.

The ani­ma­tion in the film is exquis­ite­ly done and the voice actors con­spire with the cel­lu­loid images to cre­ate a deeply char­ac­ter­ful film. The bud­ding rela­tion­ship between the boy and the Iron Giant are at times high­ly mov­ing, whilst the machi­na­tions of the sneaky Mans­ley pro­duce as suit­able a vil­lain as any live action dra­ma could evoke. The film was nom­i­nat­ed for sev­er­al awards and since its home video releas­es and TV syn­di­ca­tion has acquired some­thing of a cult fol­low­ing, being wide­ly regard­ed as a mod­ern ani­mat­ed clas­sic. Not bad for a direc­to­r­i­al debut (Bird would lat­er be respon­si­ble for fam­i­ly favourites The Incred­i­bles [2004] and Rata­touille [2007]).

Watch The Iron Giant trail­er here:

The Iron Giant
Poetry

Edward Thomas’s Adlestrop (1915)

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In the course of my work, I am occa­sion­al­ly called upon to vis­it the vil­lage of Ment­more in Buck­ing­hamshire, ser­viced by the near­by rail­way sta­tion of Ched­ding­ton. I have board­ed and alight­ed trains here on per­haps a dozen occa­sions (the lat­est being just a cou­ple weeks ago) and on not one occa­sion have I ever met anoth­er soul on its plat­forms. I guess it’s because I trav­el there off-peak and it’s no doubt total­ly dif­fer­ent at rush-hour when the com­muters leave and return to their rur­al homes, but it puts me in mind of the poem Adle­strop by the poet Edward Thomas (1878–1917), one of the Dymock poets whom we last vis­it­ed when I wrote about Rupert Brooke’s The Sol­dier here.

The poem is based on a rail­way jour­ney on the Cotswold line Thomas took on 24th June 1914, dur­ing which his train briefly stopped at Adle­strop in Glouces­ter­shire (a sta­tion long closed down, one of the many vic­tims of the Beech­ing cuts in the six­ties). Thomas record­ed the occa­sion in his note­book, writ­ing that the train, from Padding­ton to Malvern, had stopped at Adle­strop at 12:15. He record­ed his obser­va­tions of the grass, the wild­flow­ers, the black­birds and the silence inter­rupt­ed only by the hiss of steam at the stop. The poem itself was writ­ten a few months lat­er. Since then, the poem has become a pop­u­lar sym­bol­ic piece due to its sim­ple ref­er­ences to a peace­ful era and loca­tion just before the out­break of the Great War.

Adle­strop Sta­tion

Thomas enlist­ed the fol­low­ing year, and was killed soon after he arrived in France, at the Bat­tle of Arras, in 1917. His poem was pub­lished in the New States­man, just three weeks after his death. One hun­dred years to the day after the orig­i­nal jour­ney, an “Adle­strop Cen­te­nary Spe­cial” Cotswold Line train was arranged, car­ry­ing 200 pas­sen­gers from Oxford to More­ton-in-Marsh and stop­ping at Adle­strop in the place where the sta­tion for­mer­ly stood. Adle­strop vil­lage also held a cel­e­bra­tion to mark the cen­te­nary, with a pub­lic read­ing of the poem by actor Robert Hardy. The old rail­way sign can still be seen in the village’s bus-stop.

Here is Thomas’s sim­ple but ele­gant poem; know­ing it was writ­ten just before the war that changed every­thing might qui­et­ly break your heart.

Yes. I remem­ber Adle­strop—
The name, because one after­noon
Of heat the express-train drew up there
Unwont­ed­ly. It was late June.

The steam hissed. Some­one cleared his throat.
No one left and no one came
On the bare plat­form. What I saw
Was Adlestrop—only the name

And wil­lows, wil­low-herb, and grass,
And mead­owsweet, and hay­cocks dry,
No whit less still and lone­ly fair
Than the high cloudlets in the sky.

And for that minute a black­bird sang
Close by, and round him, mist­i­er,
Far­ther and far­ther, all the birds
Of Oxford­shire and Glouces­ter­shire.

Edward Thomas
Music

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1 (1875)

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Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840–1893) is often hailed as Russia’s great­est com­pos­er (from a strong field), and his works epit­o­mise the emo­tion­al depth for which Russ­ian music is known. You might say he was some­thing of a Russ­ian Beethoven, with the same genius for dra­mat­ic inten­si­ty and emo­tion­al range, and indeed Tchaikovsky deeply respect­ed and acknowl­edged Beethoven. Although his true love was in fact Mozart, it is Beethoven’s influ­ence that is evi­dent in his com­po­si­tions, par­tic­u­lar­ly his lat­er sym­phonies such as his Sixth Sym­pho­ny, the Pathé­tique, with its explo­ration of melan­cho­lia. Today, how­ev­er, I’m high­light­ing his remark­able Piano Con­cer­to No. 1 in B♭ minor, Op. 23.

It’s one of those tunes from the world of clas­si­cal music which you instant­ly recog­nise when you hear it even if you don’t nec­es­sar­i­ly know it from its title. It was com­posed dur­ing the sev­er­al months lead­ing up to Feb­ru­ary 1875 and first per­formed in Octo­ber of that year, in Boston, by pianist Hans von Bülow. It was to become one of the best known piano con­cer­ti of all time and in a nut­shell it is a sub­lime piece of music. Strange then, that it should have been so round­ly slat­ed by the man who Tchaikovsky had orig­i­nal­ly want­ed to play it before approach­ing von Bülow, name­ly Niko­lai Rubin­stein.

As the sto­ry is relat­ed, Tchaikovsky invit­ed Rubin­stein to the Moscow Con­ser­va­to­ry to demo his com­po­si­tion, just three days after com­plet­ing it. Full of antic­i­pa­tion and hope that Rubin­stein would be blown away and agree to play it, Tchaikovsky sat at the piano and played the first move­ment. To Tchaikovsky’s cha­grin not a sin­gle word was spo­ken and after a peri­od of silence he could stand it no more: “Well?” he said, to which Rubinstein’s tact­less and rather bru­tal response is described in Tchaikovsky’s own words:

“It turned out that my con­cer­to was worth­less and unplayable; pas­sages were so frag­ment­ed, so clum­sy, so bad­ly writ­ten that they were beyond res­cue; the work itself was bad, vul­gar; in places I had stolen from oth­er com­posers; only two or three pages were worth pre­serv­ing; the rest must be thrown away or com­plete­ly rewrit­ten.” Rubin­stein went on to say “that if I reworked the con­cer­to accord­ing to his demands, then he would do me the hon­our of play­ing my thing at his con­cert. ‘I shall not alter a sin­gle note,’ I answered, ‘I shall pub­lish the work exact­ly as it is!’”.

You can only imag­ine the indig­na­tion Tchaikovsky must have felt at that cut­ting cri­tique. And that’s why Tchaikovsky approached von Bülow to play it…

Post­script: Rubin­stein changed his opin­ion of the piece and became a big fan (you know what it’s like, you some­times need to hear an album three or four times before prop­er­ly appre­ci­at­ing it), and final­ly even played it, with gus­to, in Moscow, St Peters­burg and Paris, in 1878.

Let’s hear the open­ing four min­utes as played by the sev­en­teen-year-old prodi­gy Evge­ny Kissin, under the direc­tion of Her­bert von Kara­jan and the Berlin Phil­har­mon­ic Orches­tra, Salzburg 1988.

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Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
Music

Kate Bush’s Cloudbusting (1985)

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Kate Bush is noth­ing if not inno­v­a­tive. She burst onto the scene in 1978, aged nine­teen, with her debut sin­gle Wuther­ing Heights. Whilst the rest of the charts were pop­u­lat­ed either by the new gen­er­a­tion of punk and new wave or the old gen­er­a­tion of dis­co and soft rock, here was Kate singing the­atri­cal­ly about a Vic­to­ri­an nov­el and danc­ing ethe­re­al­ly on Top of the Pops. The nation was strange­ly hooked and it went to num­ber one (and no doubt Emi­ly Brontë’s Wuther­ing Heights expe­ri­enced a boost in sales at the same time).

Kate had been writ­ing songs for years, hav­ing grown up in a music-lov­ing house­hold in Kent, and had record­ed a bunch of them on demo tapes. One of these tapes found its way into the hands of Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour who imme­di­ate­ly recog­nised the song-writ­ing tal­ent and oth­er-world­ly vocals. He encour­aged Floyd’s label EMI to sign her up, which they duly did. She was six­teen and still at school so she con­tin­ued her stud­ies, honed her craft, learned inter­pre­tive dance under chore­o­g­ra­ph­er Lind­say Kemp, and in the inter­ests of good research read Wuther­ing Heights (she had writ­ten the song before actu­al­ly read­ing the book, hav­ing caught the back end of a BBC TV adap­ta­tion of it). And the rest, as they say, is his­to­ry — she went on to record nine stu­dio albums all of which reached the UK Top 10, and recent­ly enjoyed some­thing of a renais­sance fol­low­ing the use of her song Run­ning up that Hill in the Net­flix block­buster series Stranger Things.

Cloud­bust­ing remains my favourite Kate Bush song. If the record-buy­ing pub­lic thought that the sub­ject mat­ter of Wuther­ing Heights was some­what quirky, it hadn’t seen noth­ing yet. The song took inspi­ra­tion from the 1973 mem­oirs of Peter Reich (Book of Dreams), writ­ten about his close rela­tion­ship with his father the psy­chi­a­trist and inven­tor Wil­helm Reich, at their farm named “Orgonon”, in Maine. Wil­helm Reich had been exper­i­ment­ing with a cos­mic ener­gy which he termed orgone, and had built devices called orgone accu­mu­la­tors which he claimed could cure can­cers and pro­mote health. Lat­er he would build a rain-mak­ing machine called a cloud­buster and father and son would spend hours on their farm point­ing it at the sky and try­ing to make rain. Like all pro­mot­ers of fringe ideas (ask Niko­la Tes­la), Reich even­tu­al­ly fell foul of the author­i­ties, was impris­oned, and had his inven­tions and ideas sup­pressed.

Kate’s musi­cal inter­pre­ta­tion of the sto­ry is out­stand­ing. It is at once mes­mer­ic with its mantra-like back­ing vocals and hyp­not­ic cel­lo strokes, and a mas­ter­class in sto­ry-telling with its set­ting of the scene from the very first line “I dream of Orgonon”. That line, with that word, had such an intrigu­ing feel to it, long before I dis­cov­ered its true back sto­ry. The video accom­pa­ny­ing the sin­gle, is genius: a mas­ter­stroke cast­ing of Don­ald Suther­land as the father, and Kate her­self with a pix­ie cut to stand in for the son. The “cloud­buster” itself, designed by the same peo­ple who designed the “xenomorph” for Rid­ley Scott’s Alien, is a won­der­ful steam-punk inven­tion. After Reich’s arrest, we see Kate/Peter tak­ing over the reins and achiev­ing suc­cess with his father’s inven­tions – I don’t know how true this is, but at least Kate was grat­i­fied that the real Peter Reich hailed the video and said it cap­tured the sit­u­a­tion and the emo­tion per­fect­ly. Watch and enjoy here…

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Kate Bush
Literature

Oscar Wilde’s The Importance Of Being Earnest (1895)

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Oscar Wilde is remem­bered these days for being 1) wit­ty (“I have noth­ing to declare but my genius”) and 2) gay, in a far-from-ide­al peri­od of his­to­ry in which to be gay (Bosie, Read­ing gaol and all that). I sup­pose all writ­ers can be boiled down to a sim­ple phrase (Orwell: edgy polit­i­cal alle­go­ry and warn­ing to future gen­er­a­tions; Tolkien: medieval­ist pur­vey­or of elf-lore, etc). How­ev­er, whilst describ­ing Wilde in a sen­tence or two is all well and good, it’s good to know that his actu­al work con­tin­ues to be con­sumed on stage and screen — all four of his so-called draw­ing-room plays have been made into films (not to men­tion operas and musi­cals) and all four have reg­u­lar­ly been per­formed on stage up and down the land. And to any­one who enjoys their wit sharp and acer­bic, his plays are bril­liant.

Wilde wrote nine plays in all (not quite the 39 that are attrib­uted to Shake­speare but then Wilde did die at 46, and in fact wrote noth­ing much after his spell in prison) and of these it is the four afore­men­tioned draw­ing-room plays that are the most promi­nent: Lady Win­der­mere’s Fan (1892), A Woman of No Impor­tance (1893), An Ide­al Hus­band (1895) and The Impor­tance of Being Earnest (1895). The lat­ter, sub-titled a Triv­ial Com­e­dy for Seri­ous Peo­ple, was first per­formed on 14ᵗʰ Feb­ru­ary 1895 at the St James’s The­atre in Lon­don. It is a far­ci­cal com­e­dy fea­tur­ing two young men-about-town assum­ing dou­ble lives — and the name Ernest — whilst woo­ing the two young women of their affec­tions.

The play par­o­dies con­tem­po­rary social mores and man­ners, and intro­duces two great sup­port­ing char­ac­ters in the form of the for­mi­da­ble Lady Brack­nell and the fussy gov­erness Miss Prism. With the best quips, Lady Brack­nell is a bit­ing­ly comedic char­ac­ter, played over the years in var­i­ous incar­na­tions by Edith Evans, Judi Dench, Mag­gie Smith and Gwen Tay­lor (and even David Suchet). Hers is the line “To lose one par­ent, Mr Wor­thing, may be regard­ed as a mis­for­tune; to lose both looks like care­less­ness” and of course the famous­ly haughty excla­ma­tion “A hand­bag?!”. Watch Judi Dench’s ver­sion in the “inter­ro­ga­tion” clip below (though she choos­es to almost whis­per the hand­bag line instead of going for the full-blown out­raged excla­ma­tion of Edith Evans et al).

The suc­cess­ful open­ing night marked the zenith of Wilde’s career but even as he was bask­ing in the plau­dits from the appre­cia­tive audi­ence, forces were gath­er­ing that would lead to his down­fall. The Mar­quess of Queens­ber­ry, whose son Lord Alfred Dou­glas (Bosie) was Wilde’s lover, was schem­ing to throw a bunch of rot­ten veg­eta­bles at the play­wright at the end of the per­for­mance. This act of ret­ri­bu­tion was thwart­ed by secu­ri­ty but soon the feud would lead to a series of legal tri­als between March to May 1895 which would result in Wilde’s con­vic­tion and impris­on­ment for homo­sex­u­al acts. Despite the play’s ear­ly suc­cess, Wilde’s dis­grace sad­ly caused it to be closed in May after 86 per­for­mances.

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Oscar Wilde
Film, TV, and Theatre

Robert Altman’s Short Cuts (1993)

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I have just fin­ished read­ing Ray­mond Carver’s col­lec­tion of dis­qui­et­ing short sto­ries, Short Cuts, which inspired the sub­ject of today’s blog, Robert Altman’s 1993 movie of the same name. Carv­er was a mas­ter of the sub-genre of lit­er­ary fic­tion dubbed “dirty real­ism” by Amer­i­can jour­nal­ist Bill Buford. Dirty real­ism is char­ac­terised by depict­ing the seami­er side of life, with down­beat char­ac­ters suf­fer­ing from a kind of inter­nal des­per­a­tion brought about by their par­tic­u­lar life cir­cum­stances. Before full-time writ­ing, Carv­er had worked in Cal­i­for­nia in the fifties and six­ties in a vari­ety of jobs — deliv­ery man, jan­i­tor, library assis­tant, sawmill labour­er — and per­haps inter­nalised mate­r­i­al from see­ing peo­ple liv­ing lives of qui­et des­per­a­tion (to quote Hen­ry David Thore­au). His sto­ries of ordi­nary peo­ple at break­ing point inspired Robert Alt­man to make the mas­ter­piece we’re about to dis­cuss.

Filmed from a screen­play by Alt­man and Frank Barhy­dt, Short Cuts was inspired by nine of Carver’s short sto­ries (culled large­ly from his col­lec­tion Will You Please Be Qui­et, Please?, pub­lished in 1976). It was set in Los Ange­les (in con­trast to the orig­i­nal Pacif­ic North­west back­drop of Carver’s sto­ries) and traces the lives of twen­ty two prin­ci­pal char­ac­ters, loose­ly con­nect­ed to one anoth­er in one way or anoth­er. The stel­lar cast includes Matthew Modine, Julianne Moore, Jen­nifer Jason Leigh, Robert Downey Jr., Madeleine Stowe, Chris Penn, Jack Lem­mon, Frances McDor­mand, Lori Singer, Andie Mac­Dow­ell, Buck Hen­ry, Lily Tom­lin, actress and singer Annie Ross, and musi­cians Huey Lewis, Lyle Lovett, and Tom Waits.

The film begins with a fleet of heli­copters spray­ing for med­flies, which brings var­i­ous char­ac­ters togeth­er along the flight path. To this back­drop, and with the sul­try night­club jazz songs of Annie Ross as the inci­den­tal music, we see the mul­ti­ple char­ac­ters in their var­i­ous sce­nar­ios slow­ly falling apart. There is too much by way of plot to describe here, but the sto­ries play out in tan­dem and often loop back on them­selves as we see char­ac­ters famil­iar from ear­li­er scenes in the movie appear­ing in dif­fer­ent con­texts lat­er.

I called it a mas­ter­piece for good rea­son: the actors absolute­ly nail the theme of dys­func­tion. There are heart-break­ing scenes, but also mun­dane ones that nonethe­less mas­ter­ful­ly dis­play the human con­di­tion thanks to the qual­i­ty of the actors. It’s a psy­cho­log­i­cal dra­ma but a com­ic one too, and it swings from tragedy to com­e­dy and back again. It is, like Carver’s orig­i­nal sto­ries, high­ly dis­qui­et­ing but well worth the expe­ri­ence. Here is the film trail­er to whet your appetite but watch the full three hours for an extra­or­di­nary ride.

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Greg Lake’s I Believe In Father Christmas (1975)

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We all have our favourite Christ­mas songs. Most of these we like through sheer tra­di­tion – songs like Slade’s Mer­ry Christ­mas Every­body (1973) or Paul McCartney’s Won­der­ful Christ­mas­time (1979) are just as part of the Christ­mas land­scape, ingrained by sheer rep­e­ti­tion, as Christ­mas trees and Father Christ­mas. I have delved into Spo­ti­fy to explore Christ­mas songs from way back, many of which you no longer hear on the radio but which nonethe­less are often very enjoy­able – check out Kay Starr’s (Everybody’s Wait­in’ for) The Man with the Bag (1950) or Mitch Miller’s Must Be San­ta (1960) to name just two wor­thy old clas­sics (I’m also a fan of Bob Dylan’s cov­er of the lat­ter).

How­ev­er, the Christ­mas song that res­onates the most with me remains Greg Lake’s glo­ri­ous debut solo sin­gle in 1975, I Believe in Father Christ­mas. It man­ages to encap­su­late the required Christ­mas mag­ic whilst remain­ing a great piece of music in its own right. Greg Lake wrote the song ini­tial­ly with a view to protest­ing at the com­mer­cial­isaton of Christ­mas, but the lyrics pro­vid­ed by King Crim­son co-founder Pete Sin­field brought it back on track as a pic­ture-post­card Christ­mas song (albeit with a theme of lost inno­cence as the nar­ra­tor “saw through the dis­guise” and seems a bit dis­grun­tled about bro­ken promis­es regard­ing snow and peace on Earth, but nev­er mind).

The instru­men­tal melody between the vers­es comes from the “Troi­ka” por­tion of Sergei Prokofiev’s Lieu­tenant Kijé Suite, writ­ten for the 1934 Sovi­et film of the same name, and pro­vides a very Christ­massy, sleigh­bell-heavy motif. This was added at the sug­ges­tion of Greg’s band­mate from ELP, Kei­th Emer­son, who was no stranger to incor­po­rat­ing themes and motifs from clas­si­cal music. An orches­tra and choir were added too, con­tribut­ing to an ebul­lient musi­cal finale. The song was record­ed at Abbey Road stu­dios, and the video was shot on the Sinai Penin­su­la of Egypt, and in the West Bank.

The song was released in Novem­ber 1975 and got to num­ber two in the UK sin­gles chart, held off the num­ber one slot by a cer­tain Bohemi­an Rhap­sody by Queen. Lake com­ment­ed: “I got beat­en by one of the great­est records ever made. I would’ve been pissed off if I’d been beat­en by Cliff (Richard).”

Mer­ry Christ­mas!

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Greg Lake

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