Category Archives: Film, TV, and Theatre

Film, TV, and Theatre

Saturday Night Live’s More Cowbell Sketch (2000)

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The Amer­i­can late-night live tele­vi­sion sketch com­e­dy show, Sat­ur­day Night Live, has been a launch­pad for many a career since its first broad­cast in 1975. Although it’s not the sta­ple here in the UK that it clear­ly is in the States, we are very aware of its cul­tur­al sig­nif­i­cance and we can mar­vel at the names that have passed through the ranks of its cast: John Belushi, Dan Aykroyd, Gil­da Rad­ner, Chevy Chase, Bill Mur­ray, Eddie Mur­phy, Bil­ly Crys­tal, Christo­pher Guest, Dana Car­vey, Mike Myers, Chris Rock, Adam San­dler, Norm Mac­don­ald, Will Fer­rell, Sarah Sil­ver­man, Tina Fey…

The clas­sic sketch­es that the show has spawned over the years are as many and var­ied as its exten­sive cast list, and it’s fun to peruse Rolling Stone’s “50 Great­est Sat­ur­day Night Live Sketch­es of All Time”. My num­ber one is Rolling Stone’s num­ber nine but let’s not quib­ble: More Cow­bell is com­e­dy gold, how­ev­er you rank it. The sketch aired on 8th April 2000 and it’s safe to say that the stars aligned that night.

The sketch was writ­ten by reg­u­lar cast mem­ber Will Fer­rell who was inspired by an episode of VH1’s Behind the Music doc­u­ment­ing the band Blue Öys­ter Cult and their 1976 record­ing of their biggest hit, (Don’t Fear) The Reaper. Fer­rell reimag­ines the scene, with Christo­pher Walken as fic­tion­al leg­endary music pro­duc­er Bruce Dick­in­son, him­self as fic­tion­al cow­bell play­er Gene Fren­kle, and with oth­er SNL cast mem­bers (Chris Par­nell, Jim­my Fal­lon, Chris Kat­tan, Hor­a­tio Sanz) play­ing the real Blue Öys­ter Cult mem­bers. What fol­lowed was to go down in SNL his­to­ry.

Christo­pher Walken’s char­ac­ter intro­duces him­self as Bruce Dick­in­son (“Yes, the Bruce Dick­in­son”) and tells the band that they have “what appears to be a dyna­mite sound”. The band are in awe of him, and he doesn’t do too much to dis­pel the belief that he is indeed a leg­endary pro­duc­er: “Easy guys, I put my pants on just like the rest of you, one leg at a time…except, once my pants are on, I make gold records!”. Walken’s deliv­ery is sub­lime.

The first take seems to go well but the band stops play­ing due to being dis­tract­ed by Gene’s overzeal­ous cow­bell play­ing. Dick­in­son, to the sur­prise of most of the band, asks for “a lit­tle more cow­bell” and urges Gene to “real­ly explore the stu­dio space this time”. Gene’s exu­ber­ance in fol­low­ing instruc­tions only caus­es more dis­trac­tion and the band aborts anoth­er take, but Bruce dou­bles down on his insis­tence that “I got­ta have more cow­bell!” and the absur­di­ty con­tin­ues hilar­i­ous­ly.

The char­ac­ters, the tim­ing, and the dia­logue are all to a tee, and even the actors’ attempts to avoid corps­ing dur­ing the sketch add to the thrill — just watch Jim­my Fal­lon shov­ing his drum­sticks into his mouth to (vain­ly) cov­er his gig­gles! Enjoy the sketch (in 2 parts) below…

More Cow­bell

 

Film, TV, and Theatre

Oliver Postgate’s Noggin The Nog (1959)

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Per­sons of a cer­tain age (and per­haps per­sons of any age, giv­en the endur­ing pop­u­lar­i­ty of his cre­ations) will remem­ber with affec­tion the voice of ani­ma­tor and pup­peteer Oliv­er Post­gate (1925–2008). He was the cre­ator, writer and nar­ra­tor of such pop­u­lar and charm­ing children’s TV pro­grammes as Bag­puss, Nog­gin the Nog, Ivor the Engine, Clangers and Pogles’ Wood. All these shows were made by Small­films, the com­pa­ny he set up in 1959 with col­lab­o­ra­tor, artist and pup­pet mak­er Peter Firmin, in a dis­used cow­shed near Peter’s home in Blean near Can­ter­bury.

They were a great team: Post­gate came up with the con­cepts, wrote the scripts and did the stop motion film­ing whilst Firmin did the art­work and built the mod­els. As Post­gate voiced so many of the pro­duc­tions, his dis­tinc­tive voice became famil­iar to gen­er­a­tions of chil­dren. Small­films was able to pro­duce two min­utes of TV-ready film per day, which was many times more than a con­ven­tion­al stop motion ani­ma­tion stu­dio of the time, with Post­gate mov­ing the (orig­i­nal­ly card­board) char­ac­ters him­self, and work­ing his 16mm cam­era frame-by-frame with a home-made click­er.

They began in 1959 with Ivor the Engine, a series for ITV about a Welsh steam loco­mo­tive who want­ed to sing in a choir, and fol­lowed it up, also in 1959, with Nog­gin the Nog, their first pro­duc­tion for the BBC. These two pro­grammes estab­lished Small­films as a safe pair of hands to pro­duce chil­dren’s enter­tain­ment and they went on to pro­duce mate­r­i­al for the BBC right up to the 1980s. Every­one will have their favourite (in a 1999 BBC poll Bag­puss was vot­ed the most pop­u­lar chil­dren’s TV pro­gramme of all time) and for me it was Nog­gin the Nog.

The sto­ries were based around the cen­tral char­ac­ter of Nog­gin, the good-natured son of Knut, King of the Nogs, and his queen Grun­hil­da. When King Knut dies, Nog­gin meets and mar­ries Princess Nooka of the Nooks, and becomes the new king, at the expense of arch-vil­lain Nog­bad the Bad, who is for­ev­er try­ing to claim Noggin’s throne for him­self. Oth­er char­ac­ters includ­ed lazy Cap­tain of the Roy­al Guard Thornog­son, eccen­tric inven­tor Olaf the Lofty, and Grac­u­lus, a big green bird. The names and themes are very Scan­di­na­vian and saga-tinged and Post­gate must have been very famil­iar with the Nordic folk­loric tales of old such as the Ice­landic Eddas, but of course it’s children’s TV so it’s all just won­der­ful­ly made-up fun.

The pair brought in com­pos­er Ver­non Elliott to cre­ate atmos­pher­ic musi­cal sketch­es for the pro­grammes and he did so with great effect using the bas­soon, harp, glock­en­spiel and, in the case of the Clangers’ dis­tinc­tive voic­es, the swa­nee whis­tle. Speak­ing of Clangers, Firmin once said that the show’s sur­re­al­ism had led to accu­sa­tions that Post­gate was tak­ing hal­lu­cino­genic drugs: “Peo­ple used to say, ‘Ooh, what’s Oliv­er on, with all of these weird ideas?’ And we used to say, ‘He’s on cups of tea and bis­cuits’ ”. So very British!

Enjoy this nos­tal­gic selec­tion of open­ing seg­ments from Nog­gin the Nog, Clangers, and that “sag­gy, old cloth cat, bag­gy, and a bit loose at the seams”, Bag­puss…

Oliv­er Post­gate and Peter Firmin
Film, TV, and Theatre

Will Ferrell in Elf (2003)

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Any­one seen Elf again recent­ly? I have, and although I came late to the par­ty, some years after its 2003 release, it’s a Christ­mas sta­ple in our house. It’s just a joy to watch, with great per­for­mances from Will Fer­rell as Bud­dy the human-who-thinks-he’s‑an-elf, and a strong sup­port­ing cast includ­ing James Caan and Zooey Deschanel (great comedic actress lat­er to star in Amer­i­can sit­com New Girl). It’s just a charm­ing, sil­ly fam­i­ly film but a sub­lime­ly-made charm­ing, sil­ly fam­i­ly film. The direc­tor was Jon Favreau, who is known for films as diverse as rom­com, musi­cal dra­ma, adven­ture and sci-fi, and includ­ing sev­er­al of the Mar­vel Stu­dios movies.

The first script for Elf was writ­ten way back in 1993 by Amer­i­can screen­writer David Beren­baum, with Jim Car­rey in mind to play Bud­dy. How­ev­er, as the project took years to get off the ground, Car­rey went on instead to pro­duce that oth­er fes­tive favourite in 2000’s How The Grinch Stole Christ­mas, and Will Far­rell joined the project instead. If you haven’t seen it, it’s about a human baby, inad­ver­tent­ly brought back to the North Pole in Santa’s sack, who is brought up as an elf, and who lat­er tracks down his bio­log­i­cal father in New York. As an “inno­cent abroad”, there is none so inno­cent as this.

While you might assume that a lot of com­put­er trick­ery was employed to make Will Fer­rell look big­ger than his fel­low actors in the North Pole, Jon Favreau favoured cam­era tech­niques and trick­ery to cre­ate the illu­sion. He used the con­cept of “forced per­spec­tive”, along with the build­ing of two sets, one small­er than the oth­er, with one raised clos­er and small­er and one big­ger and fur­ther away. With the two sets mea­sured and lined up, the direc­tor could have one per­son on one set appear to be much larg­er than a per­son on the oth­er set. The only CGI in the film was some snow­ing.

The scene with Peter Din­klage is riotous­ly fun­ny, and is best viewed with­out food or drink in your mouth. The scene is set in the board­room of the children’s book pub­lish­ing house that Buddy’s father works for, under pres­sure to come up with the next best-sell­er. Din­klage plays a paid exter­nal children’s book wun­derkind come to bail out the com­pa­ny with his great ideas. Dinklage’s char­ac­ter, like Din­klage him­self, has dwarfism and the jux­ta­po­si­tion of inno­cence and offence that ensues, when Bud­dy enters the room and thinks he is see­ing an actu­al elf, is bril­liant. For the view­ing audi­ence it is a case of see­ing both sides…and it’s very, very fun­ny, so Mer­ry Christ­mas!

Will Fer­rell as Bud­dy the Elf

 

Film, TV, and Theatre

Patrick McGoohan as The Prisoner (1967)

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Although I was too young at the time to watch the orig­i­nal 1967 air­ing of this British TV series, I guess it must have been re-run in the eight­ies or per­haps my friend Alec had it on video and shared it with me? What­ev­er, at some point in the eight­ies I dis­cov­ered The Pris­on­er and, hooked from episode one, I became, with Alec, a big fan. Here was a TV series that was not only enter­tain­ing but actu­al­ly made you think. Noth­ing was ever what it seemed, no-one had a real name, you nev­er knew who the good guys were and who the bad; it had a unique, sur­re­al vibe, and it incor­po­rat­ed ele­ments of sci­ence fic­tion, alle­go­ry, spy fic­tion and psy­cho­log­i­cal dra­ma.

The show was cre­at­ed while Patrick McGoohan and George Mark­stein were work­ing on spy dra­ma Dan­ger Man (fun fact: Ian Flem­ing worked in the devel­op­ment stage of Dan­ger Man, and its pro­tag­o­nist, played by McGoohan, announces him­self as “Drake…John Drake”). The exact details of who cre­at­ed which aspects of The Pris­on­er are dis­put­ed though major­i­ty opin­ion cred­its McGoohan as the sole cre­ator of the series, and it’s cer­tain­ly true that it was McGoohan who pitched the idea ver­bal­ly to sta­tion boss Lew Grade. One can only imag­ine the inner work­ings of Grade’s mind as the con­cept and plot were laid down for him; how­ev­er, he went with it and the project was born.

So, what was that plot? An unnamed British intel­li­gence agent is abduct­ed and wakes up in a mys­te­ri­ous coastal loca­tion known to its res­i­dents as the Vil­lage. His cap­tors des­ig­nate him as Num­ber Six and try to find out why he abrupt­ly resigned from his job, some­thing he stead­fast­ly refus­es to divulge. His chief antag­o­nist is styled Num­ber Two (and no, we nev­er sat­is­fac­to­ri­ly learn who is Num­ber One), the iden­ti­ty of whom changes with near­ly every episode, allow­ing a ros­ter of well-known six­ties’ actors, like Leo McK­ern, Anton Rodgers and Peter Wyn­garde, to play their part.

Most of the res­i­dents are pris­on­ers them­selves, while oth­ers are embed­ded as spies or guards. The Vil­lage is sur­round­ed by moun­tains on three sides and the sea on the oth­er, and any would-be escapees who make it out to sea are tracked by CCTV and recap­tured by Rover, a huge mobile translu­cent white bal­loon-thing. Every­one uses num­bers for iden­ti­fi­ca­tion, and most of the vil­lagers wear a stan­dard out­fit con­sist­ing of coloured blaz­ers, mul­ti­coloured capes, striped sweaters, and a vari­ety of head­wear such as straw boaters. They are gen­er­al­ly very polite, though that tends to make you very sus­pi­cious of them.

Catch­phras­es abound, and I remem­ber Alec and I glee­ful­ly repeat­ing them ad infini­tum: “I’m not a num­ber, I’m a free man!”, “Be see­ing you” and the glo­ri­ous­ly lib­er­tar­i­an “I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed or num­bered!”. The lat­ter phrase I had embla­zoned on a t‑shirt bought from the gift shop at Port­meiri­on in North Wales, where The Pris­on­er was filmed and which I vis­it­ed on pil­grim­age in 1987.

Let’s enjoy the open­ing cred­its, enhanced by the excel­lent sound­track from Ron Grain­er.

Num­ber Six

 

Film, TV, and Theatre

Key and Peele’s Substitute Teacher sketches (2012)

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I came across the com­e­dy duo Key & Peele just pri­or to Jor­dan Peele’s direc­to­r­i­al career blow­ing up with the release of his films Get Out (2017), Us (2019) and, just last month, Nope. I have seen the first two of those movies, and they are intrigu­ing, slick psy­cho­log­i­cal hor­ror films, but it’s his com­e­dy with part­ner Kee­gan-Michael Key that inter­ests us here. The two first worked togeth­er on Amer­i­can sketch com­e­dy series Mad TV but broke out with their own series on Com­e­dy Cen­tral.

Key and Peele are black Amer­i­cans and their sketch­es often focus on eth­nic stereo­types and social awk­ward­ness in race rela­tions but they are very fun­ny with it, and no more so than in their two Sub­sti­tute Teacher sketch­es. In these, Key plays Mr Gar­vey, an angry and intim­i­dat­ing sub­sti­tute teacher and vet­er­an of inner-city school­ing, who has come to teach a class of white, mild-man­nered sub­ur­ban stu­dents.

Since Mr Gar­vey is pre­sum­ably used to teach­ing kids with first names hav­ing every spelling and pro­nun­ci­a­tion under the sun, he strug­gles with the reg­u­lar spellings and pro­nun­ci­a­tions of these white kids’ names: when tak­ing the class roll he pro­nounces Jacque­line as “Jay-kwellin”, Blake as “Balarkay”, Denise as “Dee-nice” and Aaron as “A‑A-Ron”. Any attempt­ed cor­rec­tion is seen as an affront and there’s no way he’s going to take it, so he forces them to acknowl­edge them­selves by his incor­rect pro­nun­ci­a­tions and threat­ens to send them to Prin­ci­pal O’Shaughnessy’s office (whose name he pro­nounces “O‑Shag-hen­nessy”).

The con­cept of Sub­sti­tute Teacher is very clever and Key absolute­ly nails his char­ac­ter. With excel­lent con­tri­bu­tions from the sup­port­ing cast of stu­dents whose names are so amus­ing­ly man­gled, it’s very, very fun­ny. “You done messed up, A‑A-Ron!”

Sub­sti­tute Teacher, Mr Gar­vey
Film, TV, and Theatre

Zack Snyder’s 300 (2006)

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Frank Miller is an Amer­i­can artist and writer of com­ic books and graph­ic nov­els such as The Dark Knight Returns, Sin City, and the inspi­ra­tion for today’s blog, 300. I have not pre­vi­ous­ly delved into the genre of the graph­ic nov­el, and actu­al­ly I’m not today either because it’s the 2006 film of the same name by Zack Sny­der, inspired by Miller’s sto­ry, that I am writ­ing about. Nev­er­the­less, the film is very much led by the graph­ic nov­el vibe and owes its styl­is­tic ren­der­ing to Miller’s work.

300 is a fic­tion­al retelling of the Bat­tle of Ther­mopy­lae in 480 BC between the invad­ing Per­sian army and the Spar­tans dur­ing the Per­sian Wars. Some years ago, my fam­i­ly and I went on a dri­ving hol­i­day to Greece and along the way vis­it­ed the sites of three ancient bat­tles: Marathon, Plataea, and the mel­liflu­ous­ly named Ther­mopy­lae, the “Hot Gates”. There’s a stat­ue of the Spar­tan king Leonidas there, his fame res­onat­ing down the ages a full two and a half thou­sand years lat­er (2502, at the time of writ­ing, to be pre­cise). The con­tem­po­ra­ne­ous his­to­ri­an Herodotus wrote about Ther­mopy­lae in his His­to­ries: how the Per­sian king Xerx­es I and his army were held at the nar­row pass at Ther­mopy­lae by a mas­sive­ly out­num­bered unit of 300 Spar­tan sol­diers. It’s history’s great­est last stand.

And boy, does the film take this idea and run with it! It is of course ide­alised out of any remote con­nec­tion to real­i­ty, but this is its whole point: it is graph­ic nov­el in motion and is made specif­i­cal­ly to be a feast for the eyes. It takes some­thing that is the most bru­tal, piti­less con­cep­tion imag­in­able – that of hand-to-hand, kill-or-be-killed com­bat with cold met­al – and turns it into a bal­let, a chore­og­ra­phy of bat­tle. Ger­ard But­ler plays Leonidas and brings rous­ing lead­er­ship to its apex: the way he moti­vates his fight­ers to bat­tle is up there with Brave­heart and Hen­ry V.

With a slight word of warn­ing for those for whom mass bat­tle is not their par­tic­u­lar cup of tea, do oth­er­wise watch this bat­tle scene. It encap­su­lates the val­our, the do-or-die spir­it, the out­right strength and dis­ci­pline and fight­ing capa­bil­i­ty of these trained Spar­tan sol­diers, and it does so, as I say, with a styl­is­ti­cal­ly chore­o­graphed beau­ty that is equal­ly won­der­ful and dis­turb­ing to behold. With the pro­vi­so that I would nev­er wish myself in the midst of this scene in a mil­lion years (the blood runs cold at the thought), by God it’s thrilling to watch!

300
Film, TV, and Theatre

Leonard Rossiter as Rigsby in Rising Damp (1975)

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We tend to think of sev­en­ties’ com­e­dy as hav­ing failed the test of time and some­thing per­haps best for­got­ten, due to our mod­ern-day sen­si­tiv­i­ties regard­ing out­dat­ed cul­tur­al norms such as those around gen­der roles and race rela­tions. Our minds con­jure up such stark exam­ples as Love Thy Neigh­bour and Mind Your Lan­guage, and cringe at their naivety, whilst the sight of white actors “black­ing up” in It Ain’t Half Hot Mum would cause notable dis­com­fort these days. But to dis­re­gard all sev­en­ties sit­coms on such a premise is to throw baby out with the bath­wa­ter, because in amongst the com­e­dy TV shows from that decade are some absolute gems, and the best of them in my view was Ris­ing Damp.

Ris­ing Damp was writ­ten by Eric Chap­pell on the back of his 1973 stage play The Banana Box and ran between 1974 and 1978, star­ring Leonard Rossiter, Frances de la Tour, Richard Beck­in­sale and Don War­ring­ton. Rossiter plays Rigs­by, the miser­ly land­lord of a run-down Vic­to­ri­an town­house who rents out his shab­by bed­sits to a vari­ety of ten­ants: Beck­in­sale plays Alan, a long-haired and good-natured med­ical stu­dent; Frances de la Tour plays Ruth (Miss Jones), the whim­si­cal spin­ster with whom Rigs­by is in love; and War­ring­ton plays the recent arrival Philip Smith, also a stu­dent and appar­ent­ly the son of an African chief. As a black man, Philip ini­tial­ly brings out the knee-jerk sus­pi­cions of Rigs­by; how­ev­er, the land­lord quick­ly accepts his new ten­ant and hence­forth regards him with a wary respect borne of Philip’s intel­li­gence and sophis­ti­cat­ed man­ners (some­thing not lost on Miss Jones either).

The char­ac­ters were ful­ly-formed from day one due to the fact that three of the prin­ci­pal actors had already honed their char­ac­ters in the stage play (only Beck­in­sale was new to the role). The dia­logue is bril­liant­ly con­ceived and deliv­ered by the actors with aplomb: their tim­ing is superb, and in Rigs­by, of course, we have one of the great­est com­e­dy char­ac­ters of all time. Watch him here as Alan and Philip tease him about women and the “eroge­nous zones”, that new­ly pop­u­larised term made pos­si­ble by the rise of the “per­mis­sive soci­ety”. Price­less.

Ris­ing Damp cast
Film, TV, and Theatre

Robert Donat in Goodbye, Mr. Chips (1939)

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Some months ago here at OGOTS Tow­ers, in a piece on Walt Whitman’s O Cap­tain! My Cap­tain (see here), we looked at that won­der­ful role por­trayed by Robin Williams in Dead Poets Soci­ety: the uber-inspi­ra­tional teacher, John Keat­ing. Well, this week we’re look­ing at anoth­er stal­wart of the fic­tion­al school­room, one Charles Edward Chip­ping AKA “Mr Chips”.

Good­bye, Mr. Chips is a 1939 roman­tic dra­ma based on the 1934 novel­la of the same name by James Hilton. The film is about Mr Chip­ping (Robert Donat), a much-loved elder­ly school teacher at Brook­field pub­lic school, who looks back at his career and per­son­al life over the decades. We learn about his rise through the teach­ing ranks, his friend­ship with Ger­man teacher Max Stae­fel (Paul Hein­reid) and his trag­i­cal­ly short mar­riage to Kathy (Greer Gar­son), who dies in child­birth along with their baby. From there­on in, Chips’ life is devot­ed exclu­sive­ly to the school and he devel­ops a rap­port with gen­er­a­tions of pupils, even­tu­al­ly teach­ing the sons and grand­sons of many of his ear­li­er pupils.

Although he osten­si­bly retires in 1914, Chips is soon enjoined to return as inter­im head­mas­ter due to the short­age of teach­ers because of the Great War. Dur­ing a bomb­ing attack by a Ger­man Zep­pelin, Chips insists that the boys keep on trans­lat­ing their Latin, and to the great amuse­ment of his pupils, choos­es the sto­ry of Julius Cae­sar’s bat­tles against the Ger­man­ic tribes. Now there’s stiff upper lip!

As the war drags on though, every Sun­day in chapel Chips reads aloud into the school’s Roll of Hon­our the names of the many for­mer boys and teach­ers who have died in the war. It’s a poignant scene (that you can see below). Upon dis­cov­er­ing that Max Stae­fel has died fight­ing on the Ger­man side, he reads out his name, too. “Fun­ny read­ing his name out with the oth­ers, after all, he was an ene­my”, says one school­boy to anoth­er after­wards. “One of Chips’ ideas I sup­pose” his mate says, “he’s got lots of fun­ny ideas like that”.

Chips retires per­ma­nent­ly in 1918, but con­tin­ues liv­ing near­by. He is on his deathbed in 1933 when he over­hears his col­leagues talk­ing about him. He responds, “I thought I heard you say it was a pity – a pity I nev­er had any chil­dren. But you’re wrong. I have! Thou­sands of them, thou­sands of them.. and all.. boys”.

Robert Donat as Mr Chips
Film, TV, and Theatre

Hugo Weaving in Bodyline (1984)

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A dra­ma about crick­et, at first sight, doesn’t smack too much of a great idea for tele­vi­sion. The des­per­ate pitch­ing of ideas by Alan Par­tridge to that pro­gram­ming com­mis­sion­er in I’m Alan Par­tridge springs to mind (“Mon­key Ten­nis”?). Well, how about a bril­liant, riv­et­ing TV dra­ma about crick­et that doesn’t even require you to be a crick­et fan to enjoy? If that sounds oxy­moron­ic, check out 1984’s Aus­tralian-made TV mini-series Body­line, telling the sto­ry of the 1932/33 Eng­lish Ash­es crick­et tour of Aus­tralia.

Stick with me.

First, the his­tor­i­cal set­ting: in 1932, the Eng­land crick­et team set sail to Aus­tralia to face an Aus­tralian team huge­ly bol­stered by one Don­ald Brad­man, who had come to Eng­land in the 1930 Ash­es and scored 974 runs with a bat­ting aver­age of 139.14. The Eng­land crick­et author­i­ties felt that some new tac­tics were need­ed to cur­tail Bradman’s extra­or­di­nary bat­ting abil­i­ty which threat­ened to be even more prodi­gious in the upcom­ing tour on his home turf.

Enter Dou­glas Jar­dine. Oxford Uni­ver­si­ty-edu­cat­ed, and from the upper ech­e­lons of British soci­ety, Jar­dine had been mould­ed to be Eng­land cap­tain from an ear­ly age. He had already toured Aus­tralia and had devel­oped an antipa­thy to the crowds there who had jeered him. And now he was lead tac­ti­cian on how to defuse Brad­man. With his fast bowlers Harold Lar­wood and Bill Voce, he devised “fast leg the­o­ry” bowl­ing – lat­er called “body­line” – which entailed deliv­er­ing the ball short and fast so that it bounced dan­ger­ous­ly towards the batsman’s body. When the bats­man defend­ed him­self with his bat a result­ing deflec­tion could be caught by one of sev­er­al field­ers stand­ing close by on the leg side.

The tac­tic turned out to be effec­tive: it seri­ous­ly dis­com­fit­ed the bats­men and Eng­land won by four Tests to one, but it cre­at­ed a furore that threat­ened to turn into a diplo­mat­ic inci­dent. The watch­ing crowds were out­raged and most com­men­ta­tors thought the tac­tics unsports­man­like, intim­i­dat­ing and down­right dan­ger­ous (who thought that it would be the Eng­lish to employ tac­tics that were “just not crick­et”?).

In the TV series, Dou­glas Jar­dine is played mes­mer­iz­ing­ly by a young Hugo Weav­ing (best known lat­er for his por­tray­als of Agent Smith in The Matrix and Elrond in The Lord of the Rings), who admirably cap­tures the arro­gance and cer­tain­ty of a born leader, and one who dogged­ly pur­sues his strat­e­gy against mount­ing crit­i­cism.

Let’s watch the self-assured Jar­dine dis­cussing Brad­man with his Sur­rey team­mate Per­cy Fend­er and oth­ers pri­or to the tour. He’s great to watch, and note also the love­ly cam­era work cir­cling him as he talks. One last word for the writer of the theme music for the series; the music is so emo­tion­al­ly mov­ing (see the sec­ond clip of the open­ing cred­its) that I thought at first they had bor­rowed a clas­si­cal piece from some­one like Pachel­bel but not so: cred­it to Aussie com­pos­er Chris Neal.

Hugo Weav­ing as Dou­glas Jar­dine
Film, TV, and Theatre

Claude Berri’s Jean de Florette (1986)

1 Comment

Jean de Flo­rette is a 1986 French com­e­dy-dra­ma film direct­ed by Claude Berri and based on a nov­el by one of France’s great­est 20th cen­tu­ry writ­ers, Mar­cel Pag­nol. The film takes place in rur­al Provence, where two local farm­ers (Yves Mon­tand and Daniel Auteuil) plot to trick a new­com­er (Gérard Depar­dieu) out of his new­ly inher­it­ed prop­er­ty. The film thus stars three of France’s most promi­nent actors, and this is a great place to see them all in action in one place.

The film was shot back to back with its sequel, Manon des Sources, over a peri­od of sev­en months in and around the Vau­cluse depart­ment of Provence, and whilst at the time it was the most expen­sive French film ever made, it was also a great com­mer­cial and crit­i­cal suc­cess, both domes­ti­cal­ly and inter­na­tion­al­ly, and was nom­i­nat­ed for eight César awards, and ten BAF­TAs. The suc­cess of the two films helped pro­mote Provence as a tourist des­ti­na­tion (a ten­den­cy that was cement­ed three years lat­er when Peter Mayle’s best-sell­ing mem­oir, A Year in Provence, was pub­lished ).

Any­way, I have my mate Jason’s wife Liz to thank for intro­duc­ing me to Jean de Flo­rette: whilst at their house sev­er­al years ago, she thrust the DVD of the film into my hands, say­ing “you’ll love this”. I took it home and duti­ful­ly watched it…and she was right! What was at first sight an obscure French film with a dull name and an odd plot became a huge­ly enjoy­able ride. The plot is indeed unusu­al, involv­ing jeal­ous designs on rur­al arable land, hare-brained plans and machi­na­tions around the block­ing up of a nat­ur­al spring. How­ev­er, it is a joy to watch: the rur­al vil­lage scenes are so glo­ri­ous­ly, authen­ti­cal­ly French, and the char­ac­ters con­jured up by these great actors, and a strong sup­port­ing cast, are tremen­dous.

This scene I have cho­sen is pret­ty rep­re­sen­ta­tive, I think: we have Depardieu’s irre­press­ibly opti­mistic Jean, pros­e­lytis­ing about his plans to breed rab­bits and grow mar­rows, Auteuil’s Ugolin try­ing at every turn to dis­suade and dispir­it him, and Montand’s Le Papet (Ugolin’s uncle), a wily owl pre­sid­ing over his and Ugolin’s schemes to dri­ve the new­com­er away and take the land for them­selves.

Daniel Auteuil, Yves Mon­tand, Gérard Depar­dieu