Film, TV, and Theatre

Christopher Guest’s This is Spinal Tap (1984)

Leave a comment

When I was young, not yet a teenag­er, I inher­it­ed from my elder sis­ters a num­ber of vinyl LPs, among them David Bowie’s The Rise and Fall of Zig­gy Star­dust and the Spi­ders from Mars, Cat Stevens’ Teas­er and the Fire­cat, the Moody Blues’ In Search Of The Lost Chord, and an album that appar­ent­ly didn’t need much of a title: Led Zep­pelin II. Although I loved all of these records, it was the lat­ter album that informed my imme­di­ate direc­tion in music; riff­ing gui­tar, crash­ing drums, shriek­ing vocals: what was not to like?

Soon I would encounter Deep Pur­ple, Thin Lizzy, UFO, AC/DC and Black Sab­bath, and by my mid-teens, a (large­ly young male) cross-sec­tion of the coun­try would be in the grip of the so-called “New Wave of British Heavy Met­al”. Seem­ing­ly all of a sud­den, there was a super­abun­dance of bands com­pris­ing long-haired, leather‑, den­im- or lycra-clad rock­ers: Judas Priest, Sax­on, Iron Maid­en, Def Lep­pard, Angel­witch, Pray­ing Man­tis, the list went on and on. And oh, the gigs! I attend­ed many of those. You would find your sens­es assault­ed by very loud music, bright lights, dry ice, a seething crowd of head­bang­ing fans, the smell of sweat and patchouli oil – it was cer­tain­ly a thrilling expe­ri­ence. How­ev­er, the idio­syn­crasies of the genre, along with some of the bands’ increas­ing­ly the­atri­cal stage shows and themes, would make them ripe for satire.

Enter Christo­pher Guest, a British-Amer­i­can screen­writer, actor, and come­di­an who would become known for his series of com­e­dy films shot in mock-doc­u­men­tary (mock­u­men­tary) style, and begin­ning in 1984 with his hilar­i­ous take on the heavy met­al move­ment, This Is Spinal Tap. Direct­ed by Rob Rein­er, it stars Guest, Michael McK­ean, and Har­ry Shear­er as mem­bers of fic­tion­al British heavy met­al band, Spinal Tap, and we fol­low them on their Amer­i­can tour. The film sat­i­rizes the behav­iour and musi­cal pre­ten­sions of rock bands, and to those with an inside view of the British heavy rock scene, the result is a painful­ly accu­rate and utter­ly hilar­i­ous pas­tiche.

Let’s start with the band mem­bers’ names, all great choic­es: David St. Hub­bins (McK­ean) and Nigel Tufnel (Guest) on vocals and gui­tar, bassist Derek Smalls (Shear­er), key­boardist Viv Sav­age, and drum­mer Mick Shrimp­ton. Most of the film’s dia­logue was impro­vised and dozens of hours were filmed, and giv­en that the prin­ci­pal actors were Amer­i­can, the fideli­ty to the British­ness is out­stand­ing.

The film is packed with great scenes of on and off­stage antics and dra­ma, but to keep it down I have select­ed three clas­sics for your amuse­ment: the scene where­in Nigel Tufnel takes us on a back­stage tour of this gui­tars and amps (includ­ing the ones that “go up to eleven”); the scene where­in the band get lost try­ing to find the stage door; and the hilar­i­ous Stone­henge scene, in which the band, play­ing its set-piece epic, is flab­ber­gast­ed to see the expect­ed 18-foot-tall stage props of “Stone’enge” descend to the stage at the cru­cial moment in dimen­sions con­struct­ed erro­neous­ly and under­whelm­ing­ly in inch­es. Price­less.

 

Spinal Tap
Spinal Tap
Poetry

Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy (1320)

1 Comment

“Aban­don hope, all ye who enter here”. No, not to this blog (though it’s a con­sid­er­a­tion) but to the entrance to Hell, this inscrip­tion appear­ing on the gates there­of in the ear­ly part of Dante Alighieri’s Infer­no, Book I of his Divine Com­e­dy (Div­ina Com­me­dia). Thus begins an epic jour­ney through the Infer­no (Hell), the Pur­ga­to­rio (Pur­ga­to­ry), and the Par­adiso (Heav­en). And we are talk­ing epic here: 14,233 lines of terza rima (three-line rhyming scheme in the pat­tern aba bcb cdc ded etc), begun in 1308 and com­plet­ed in 1320, a year before Dante’s death. It is wide­ly recog­nised as one of the great­est works of world lit­er­a­ture; indeed, in T S Eliot’s esti­ma­tion, “Dante and Shake­speare divide the world”.

The nar­ra­tive describes Dan­te’s trav­els through Hell, Pur­ga­to­ry, and Heav­en, alle­gor­i­cal­ly rep­re­sent­ing the soul’s jour­ney towards God. He is accom­pa­nied through­out by a guide: in Hell and Pur­ga­to­ry it’s the great Roman poet, Vir­gil, whilst in Heav­en it’s Beat­rice, thought to be Dante’s “ide­al woman” and based on a real Flo­ren­tine woman he had admired from a dis­tance.

In Hell, Vir­gil shows Dante the poor souls suf­fer­ing a pun­ish­ment direct­ly relat­ed to the nature of their sin. This is con­tra­pas­so (“suf­fer the oppo­site”): for exam­ple, the pun­ish­ment for sooth­say­ers and for­tune-tellers (who had tried to see the future by for­bid­den means) is to walk with their heads on back­wards so that they can­not see what is ahead. The lust­ful, who allowed their pas­sions to blow them astray, are now con­stant­ly buf­fet­ed back and forth by stormy winds. Such poet­ic jus­tice is sim­i­lar­ly met­ed out to the glut­to­nous and greedy, the wrath­ful and vio­lent, the fraud­u­lent and hyp­o­crit­i­cal, and to the heretics and blas­phe­mers. Many real per­son­ages of Dante’s time are named and shamed, damned by their incon­ti­nence in life. It paid to live an upright life in Dan­te’s day!

Pur­ga­to­ry is con­ceived as a ter­raced moun­tain to climb, rep­re­sent­ing spir­i­tu­al growth. Dante dis­cuss­es the nature of sin, vice and virtue, and moral issues preva­lent in the Church and pol­i­tics of the day. The 13th cen­tu­ry was a rich time for medieval the­ol­o­gy and phi­los­o­phy, and Dante draws heav­i­ly from the body of work pro­duced by philoso­phers such as Siger of Bra­bant, Bonaven­ture and Thomas Aquinas.

The third and final part, Heav­en, is depict­ed as a series of con­cen­tric spheres around Earth, and here, Beat­rice takes over the role of guide from Vir­gil, rep­re­sent­ing divine knowl­edge super­sed­ing human rea­son. Here we encounter the car­di­nal virtues, such as pru­dence, for­ti­tude, jus­tice and tem­per­ance, and ever upward, Dante final­ly has a vision of the ulti­mate and in a flash of under­stand­ing that he can­not express, he sees God him­self.

If you’re imag­in­ing that a read­ing of the Divine Com­e­dy could be a great adven­ture, you’d be right, but if you’re baulk­ing at its length, an excel­lent alter­na­tive is to seek out the audio book nar­rat­ed by (of all peo­ple) John Cleese, who does a smash­ing job of nar­rat­ing this great poem.

 
Dante by Bot­ti­cel­li
Film, TV, and Theatre

Ken Loach’s Kes (1969)

Leave a comment

I’m from York­shire and, like all York­shire men and women, am very proud to be so (you may have encoun­tered this prob­a­bly not-unan­noy­ing phe­nom­e­non if you’re not your­self from York­shire). The coun­ty is known for the rugged beau­ty of its Dales in the north-west, and its Wolds and Moors in the north-east, though it is asso­ci­at­ed too, in the west and south, with a bleak­er, more indus­tri­al land­scape, where social depri­va­tion and pover­ty has played its part. One such area pro­vides the set­ting for Ken Loach’s 1969 film, the clas­sic (and often very mov­ing) “York­shire film”, Kes.

The film, adapt­ed from Bar­ry Hines’s nov­el A Kestrel for a Knave, fol­lows Bil­ly Casper, a sen­si­tive and down­trod­den 15-year-old from work­ing-class Barns­ley who finds solace in train­ing a kestrel. It is a gen­tle dra­ma about harsh cir­cum­stances, and I remem­ber its impact: it was some­thing of a sen­sa­tion, and it won the young actor, David Bradley, a deserved BAFTA for his role.

Bil­ly’s broth­er bul­lies him and his fam­i­ly neglects him. At school, most of his teach­ers ridicule and reject him, espe­cial­ly sadis­tic Mr Sug­den (Bri­an Glover, with a bravu­ra per­for­mance you’ll see below). Bil­ly appears head­ed for a menial job with no future and con­se­quent­ly has no moti­va­tion and noth­ing to look for­ward to, until the day he finds a kestrel, a Euro­pean fal­con, which he befriends and cares for. He rais­es, nur­tures, and trains the fal­con, whom he calls “Kes”, and encour­age­ment from one of his more sym­pa­thet­ic teach­ers (played admirably by Col­in Welland) offers Bil­ly hope.

The nat­u­ral­ism achieved in the film is tes­ta­ment to Loach’s direc­to­r­i­al skills and his desire for authen­tic­i­ty. The schoolkids that he directs play their parts for real, with lit­tle appar­ent self-aware­ness. It often feels as if the view­er is watch­ing via a hid­den cam­era. Take this clas­sic foot­ball match scene, below, where­in Mr Sug­den boss­es the kids boor­ish­ly (though, it has to be said, high­ly amus­ing­ly), elic­it­ing much ban­ter, rich with local jar­gon and accent, from kids on and off cam­era. It will per­haps prompt rec­ol­lec­tion of cold, mud­dy sports pitch­es from your own school­days; it does me. How­ev­er, it is a charm­ing piece of social real­ism that you will enjoy even if you don’t catch every bit of dia­logue!

Art

Jean-Léon Gérôme’s The Carpet Merchant (1887)

2 Comments

In July of 1798, Napoleon marched into Egypt and defeat­ed the Turks at the Bat­tle of the Pyra­mids, weak­en­ing past break­ing point the wan­ing Ottoman Empire. He was dri­ven out a year lat­er by the British, but in that small amount of time he had already changed every­thing: because fol­low­ing him came first a trick­le and then a tor­rent of west­ern­ers into the Near and Mid­dle East. They came and they jour­neyed through Turkey, Iraq, Per­sia, Egypt, Lebanon, Pales­tine, Ara­bia and North Africa. Many of them wrote about their expe­ri­ences, spark­ing a deep fas­ci­na­tion with these exot­ic, mys­te­ri­ous lands.

The artists came too, and they paint­ed what they saw: bazaars and souks; robed and mous­ta­chioed Arabs smok­ing hookah pipes; mosques and minarets; Turk­ish baths and harems. With time this became an art move­ment and today we call it Ori­en­tal­ist art. I love it for the way it con­jures up the exot­ic, and although it is clear that some artists let their imag­i­na­tions get the bet­ter of them (I’m think­ing of the harems, which no artist can have actu­al­ly seen), their depic­tions of these lands must have inspired many a beat­ing heart to vis­it.

One such Ori­en­tal­ist was French painter, Jean-Léon Gérôme. In 1856, he vis­it­ed Egypt for the first time and fol­lowed the clas­sic grand tour of a typ­i­cal occi­den­tal vis­i­tor to the Ori­ent: up the Nile to Cairo, then to Abu Sim­bel, across the Sinai Penin­su­la and through the Wadi el-Ara­ba to the Holy Land, Jerusalem and final­ly to Dam­as­cus. He gath­ered themes, arte­facts and cos­tumes for his ori­en­tal scenes, and then set to work, soon estab­lish­ing a rep­u­ta­tion back home which saw him become hon­orary Pres­i­dent of the French Soci­ety of Ori­en­tal­ist Painters.

There’s a gallery, below, of sev­er­al of his Ori­en­tal­ist works, giv­ing a good flavour of what he was about, and below that my favourite piece of the lot, The Car­pet Mer­chant. I have trav­elled quite exten­sive­ly myself in these lands, from Istan­bul, Beirut and Dam­as­cus to Mar­rakesh, Petra and Cairo; and noth­ing quite beats the sim­ple plea­sure of wan­der­ing the snaking alley­ways and souks of an old quar­ter, and tak­ing in the sights, sounds and smells of life there. The Car­pet Mer­chant cap­tures that feel­ing per­fect­ly.

The Carpet Merchant
The Car­pet Mer­chant

 

Music

The Rolling Stones’ (I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction (1965)

Leave a comment

In April 1965, the Rolling Stones embarked on their first head­lin­ing tour of the Unit­ed States. They had already had two US top ten hits (Time Is On My Side and The Last Time) but in terms of the British inva­sion they were still a notch or two below bands such as Herman’s Her­mits and the Dave Clark Five. One song, writ­ten dur­ing this tour, would soon change that.

The sto­ry behind that song is enshrined in rock folk­lore. Mid­way through the tour, in a motel in Clear­wa­ter, Flori­da, Kei­th Richards woke up in the mid­dle of the night with a tune in his head. Fum­bling in the dark for his cas­sette recorder, he hit the record but­ton and played the eight-note gui­tar riff. He also mum­bled a lyric — “I can’t get no sat­is­fac­tion” – and then fell asleep. In Richards’ own words: “On the tape you can hear me drop the pick. The rest is me snor­ing”.

Richards didn’t think his riff would turn into any­thing com­mer­cial; nonethe­less, Mick Jag­ger was inspired to flesh out the lyrics and when the band’s tour took them to Chica­go just three days after Richards’ noc­tur­nal ram­blings, they dropped into Chess Stu­dios (home to their heroes Chuck Berry, Bo Did­dley and Mud­dy Waters) and laid down the song.

This first attempt was actu­al­ly an acoustic, folksy ver­sion of the song, sound­ing noth­ing like the swag­ger­ing stomp it would turn into. It didn’t take long for that trans­for­ma­tion to occur, how­ev­er: just two days lat­er the band re-record­ed the song, this time in RCA Stu­dios on Hol­ly­wood Boule­vard. Richards had just acquired a Mae­stro FZ‑1 Fuzz-Tone ped­al, Char­lie Watts put down a dif­fer­ent tem­po, and the band gave the song a far more aggres­sive feel.The song was released as a sin­gle in the Unit­ed States in June 1965. It was a smash hit, giv­ing the Stones their first US num­ber one and set­ting the band on their tra­jec­to­ry to become the “Great­est Rock and Roll Band in the World”. Here’s a suit­ably elec­tri­fy­ing per­for­mance deliv­ered by the band and filmed dur­ing a quick tour of Ire­land a few weeks after the song hit num­ber one.

Literature

Joyce Lankester Brisley’s Milly-Molly-Mandy Stories (1925)

Leave a comment

One of life’s great plea­sures is read­ing to your chil­dren at bed­time, and your blog­ger, accord­ing­ly, has read many a children’s sto­ry to his own girls (and pro­vid­ed, inci­den­tal­ly, many an amus­ing voice to bring char­ac­ters to life and make the sto­ry more inter­est­ing – I didn’t live through years of Jack­anory for noth­ing, you know!). Some of the books we read were con­tem­po­rary, and some were hardy peren­ni­als from bygone eras enjoyed by pre­ced­ing gen­er­a­tions. One of the lat­ter, from near­ly a hun­dred years ago now, and which stands out as a paragon of charm is Joyce Lankester Bris­ley’s 1920s col­lec­tions of sto­ries about Mil­ly-Mol­ly-Mandy, the lit­tle girl in the nice white cot­tage with the thatched roof.

To this day, from time to time in our house, we return to Mil­ly-Mol­ly-Mandy and read one of her sto­ries, each one a minia­ture mas­ter­piece and the lit­er­ary equiv­a­lent of com­fort food. Now, it is pret­ty obvi­ous that these sto­ries are not “rel­e­vant” to today, and they are vul­ner­a­ble to claims of sen­ti­men­tal­i­ty and a rose-tint­ed depic­tion of a sim­ple and long-gone world. But such objec­tions don’t mat­ter a jot to a child to whom the sto­ry is being read; nor to me, the nar­ra­tor, frankly. Chil­dren don’t need “rel­e­vance”; they need to be transported…and Joyce Lankester Brisley’s world cer­tain­ly does that.

We are invit­ed into a world of rur­al charm, in an unnamed vil­lage with a school, a blacksmith’s, a grocer’s, and a baker’s, along with copi­ous fields used as short­cuts by Mil­ly-Mol­ly-Mandy, Lit­tle Friend Susan, Bil­ly Blunt, and Toby the dog, as they walk to and from school or run errands for Moth­er. Each sto­ry begins with “Once upon a time”, and is fol­lowed by reas­sur­ing­ly unspec­tac­u­lar goings-on in Milly-Molly-Mandy’s life, be it run­ning to the shops with a six­pence for a skein of wool for Grand­ma, feed­ing milk to a baby hedge­hog, or hav­ing a pic­nic in a hol­lowed-out tree trunk with her friends.

The mag­ic lies in the way Joyce Lankester Bris­ley weaves her sim­ple sto­ries, the words and phras­es she uses, and the charm­ing illus­tra­tions, drawn by the author her­self, that accom­pa­ny the nar­ra­tive. Such sim­ple child­hood pas­times as “mend­ing” a pud­dle by adding peb­bles and stones into it, or get­ting wet and flap­ping and quack­ing like ducks: who does­n’t relate to that?

So to those to whom Milly-Molly-Mandy’s world is still cul­tur­al­ly com­pre­hen­si­ble, be warned: these sto­ries can give you a lump in your throat, as you mourn a dis­ap­peared world trod­den under­foot by the piti­less forces of mod­ernism and glob­al­ism! Nev­er­the­less, the sto­ries are an absolute delight and solid­ly deserve their place in the pan­theon of child­hood lit­er­a­ture.

Art

John Singer Sargent’s Madame X (1884)

Leave a comment

One of my favourite artists is John Singer Sar­gent, the great Edwar­dian-era por­trait painter. Born in Flo­rence to Amer­i­can par­ents, he lived an itin­er­ant ear­ly life in Europe, his par­ents mov­ing reg­u­lar­ly between sea and moun­tain resorts in France, Ger­many, Italy, and Switzer­land (alright for some). Sargent’s ear­ly signs of artis­tic tal­ent led the fam­i­ly to Paris where he gained admis­sion to the École des Beaux-Arts and stud­ied with the not­ed French por­traitist, Car­o­lus-Duran.

In 1879, at the age of 23, Sar­gent paint­ed a por­trait of Car­o­lus-Duran and exhib­it­ed it at the Paris Salon. It met with such pub­lic approval that his future direc­tion was sealed. He quick­ly accu­mu­lat­ed com­mis­sions for por­traits and his fame spread. He paint­ed com­mis­sioned por­traits right up until his death in 1925, but in between com­mis­sions he would paint friends and col­leagues for fun. It was one such non-com­mis­sioned paint­ing, Car­na­tion, Lily, Lily, Rose, that grabbed my atten­tion at the Tate Britain and turned me into an instant fan. How­ev­er, the sub­ject of today’s blog is the paint­ing that became Sar­gen­t’s head­line-grab­ber, Por­trait of Madame X.

Just as we saw when I blogged about Edouard Manet, Sargent’s suc­cess­ful career was not with­out scan­dal. In 1884 he sub­mit­ted Por­trait of Madame X to the Paris Salon. “Madame X” was “pro­fes­sion­al beau­ty” and socialite, Vir­ginie Gautreau, the Amer­i­can wife of a French banker. Sar­gent actu­al­ly pur­sued her to paint her, rather than the oth­er way round. It’s a deeply allur­ing piece, with the sit­ter stand­ing in pro­file, and the deep black of her dress empha­sis­ing the “aris­to­crat­ic pal­lor” of her skin. With cinched waist, the ele­gant bone struc­ture, and with one shoul­der strap seem­ing­ly about to fall off the shoul­der, the image could only sug­gest one thing — the erot­ic — and it was this, inevitably (for the time), that pre­cip­i­tat­ed the scan­dal at the Salon. It was only a tem­po­rary set­back (and Sar­gent respond­ed by repaint­ing the shoul­der strap in a “safer” posi­tion), and I don’t sup­pose a lit­tle bit of scan­dal is too harm­ful to the career of a gift­ed artist, after all.

In June of 1999, Nicole Kid­man was the cov­er girl of Vogue, and in her cov­er sto­ry, she posed for pho­tographs in a num­ber of John Singer Sar­gent re-imag­in­ings (includ­ing Madame X) by the pho­tog­ra­ph­er, Steven Meisel. The pho­to­genic Kid­man suits these pic­tures per­fect­ly so I thought it well worth show­cas­ing them here, along­side their originals…starting with the beguil­ing Madame X.

Madame X
Lady Agnew
Mrs George Swin­ton
Mrs Charles E Inch­es
John Singer Sar­gent
Art

Rembrandt’s The Anatomy Lesson Of Dr Nicolaes Tulp (1632)

Leave a comment

Giv­en all the stan­dard gen­res of paint­ing open to an artist in 17th cen­tu­ry Ams­ter­dam – land­scape, por­trai­ture, still life, his­to­ry, reli­gious – you could be for­giv­en for assum­ing that the sub­ject of today’s blog, Rembrandt’s The Anato­my Les­son of Dr Nico­laes Tulp, was some­thing of a one-off. It has a seem­ing­ly very spe­cif­ic and niche sub­ject: that of an anato­my les­son involv­ing the dis­sec­tion of a cadav­er! In fact, though, at the time of Rembrandt’s work in 1632, there was already a strong tra­di­tion of Dutch “guild por­trai­ture” (group por­traits com­mis­sioned by a pro­fes­sion­al asso­ci­a­tion such as the Guild of Sur­geons) and many of these involved dis­sec­tion scenes, so Rembrandt’s sub­ject was far from unique for the time.

This was the Dutch Gold­en Age. Com­pared to most oth­er coun­tries of 17th cen­tu­ry Europe, the Nether­lands was pos­i­tive­ly pro­gres­sive in its mod­el of gov­ern­ment. Since the for­ma­tion of the Dutch repub­lic in 1581, the Nether­lands had expe­ri­enced the emer­gence of a nation­al and cul­tur­al iden­ti­ty, and both reli­gious free­dom and open trade were high­ly val­ued. With a bur­geon­ing econ­o­my and the rise of the mid­dle class­es, it was a place where Dutch sci­en­tists — and Dutch artists — were able to exper­i­ment with­out fear of papal cen­sure. Guild por­trai­ture was there­fore an expres­sion of Dutch pro­gres­sivism.

The prac­tice of dis­sec­tion, pri­or to the Dutch repub­lic, had been moral­ly ques­tion­able: in fact, the Church had offi­cial­ly con­demned it, and even post-repub­lic it was still a grey area. How­ev­er, it was recog­nised that dis­sec­tion was part and par­cel of sci­en­tif­ic advance­ment, and so Amsterdam’s now-Protes­tant city coun­cil sanc­tioned the prac­tice on the con­di­tion that only the corpses of crim­i­nals were used. Anatom­ic dis­sec­tions soon became high­ly pop­u­lar pub­lic events, last­ing for sev­er­al days (and for that rea­son car­ried out in the win­ter, to retard the decay of the cadav­ers) and gen­er­at­ing a sub­stan­tial income from pay­ing observers.

Artists were thus com­mis­sioned to cap­ture the scene and guild mem­bers would have paid a pret­ty sum to be fea­tured in it. What dif­fer­en­ti­ates this paint­ing from all the oth­ers was the fact that this was Rem­brandt, the most gift­ed and pro­lif­ic artist of his age, and typ­i­cal­ly he under­took to reject the tra­di­tion­al com­po­si­tion of Dutch guild por­trai­ture and instead he adopt­ed a more vis­cer­al style. Rem­brandt puts the corpse at the cen­tre of the scene and por­trays it in full length, in Christ-like repose. It turns a group van­i­tas por­trait into a quite dra­mat­ic and arrest­ing image.

The corpse, inci­den­tal­ly, was one Adri­aan Adri­aan­szoon, who was con­vict­ed for armed rob­bery and sen­tenced to death by hang­ing (which occurred on the very morn­ing of the dis­sec­tion). Per­haps not the most illus­tri­ous rea­son to be cap­tured on can­vas for pos­ter­i­ty, but hey ho!

Anatomy Lesson
The Anato­my Les­son of Dr Nico­laes Tulp
Dance

Fred Astaire’s Revolving Room Dance Sequence in Royal Wedding (1951)

2 Comments

The rotat­ing movie set is a great exam­ple of how moviemak­ers can cre­ate cin­e­ma mag­ic. An ordi­nary stage is sus­pend­ed with­in a steel gim­bal, like a box wedged into a wash­ing machine drum, and then amaz­ing effects can be achieved, where­by actors can be shown to appear to defy grav­i­ty. This has been use­ful for hor­ror movie mak­ers (Jeff Gold­blum lurk­ing on the ceil­ing in The Fly; JoBeth Williams being para­nor­mal­ly rolled up the wall to the ceil­ing in Pol­ter­geist; Aman­da Wyss in the dream sequence from Night­mare on Elm Street…) and the tech­nique was also impres­sive­ly employed by Stan­ley Kubrik in a remark­able scene from sci-fi clas­sic 2001: A Space Odyssey. In this scene, a crew mem­ber is shown run­ning around the hub of the space­craft, its rota­tion pro­vid­ing arti­fi­cial grav­i­ty for his exer­cise; in real­i­ty, he is essen­tial­ly run­ning on the spot with the entire set rotat­ing beneath his feet. Here’s a brief clip:

Back in 1951, how­ev­er, direc­tor Stan­ley Donen used the tech­nique to superb effect in musi­cal com­e­dy, in the MGM movie Roy­al Wed­ding, which show­cased the tal­ents of the suave Fred Astaire. Astaire had already retired once, back in 1946, before being lured back into the movie busi­ness to replace the injured Gene Kel­ly in East­er Parade (1948). Roy­al Wed­ding is set in Lon­don at the time of the wed­ding of Princess Eliz­a­beth and Philip Mount­bat­ten, and fea­tures songs by Bur­ton Lane and Alan Jay Lern­er; how­ev­er, it was of course the dance rou­tines that make it stand out.

In one of his solos, You’re All the World to Me, Astaire dances on the walls and ceil­ings of his room (long before Lionel Richie scored a hit with that con­cept!). The idea had actu­al­ly occurred to Astaire him­self, years before, so it must have been par­tic­u­lar­ly reward­ing for him to per­fect this clever illu­sion. Let’s check out the scene both as seen by the movie audi­ence, along­side the “how it’s done” ver­sion.

Fred Astaire
Fred Astaire
Poetry

Max Ehrmann’s Desiderata (1927)

4 Comments

I remem­ber, when I was young, my grand­ma hav­ing this enig­mat­ic prose poem on her wall. For some rea­son I nev­er actu­al­ly asked her about it; I was mere­ly aware of it and its strange­ly saga­cious words. Begin­ning strik­ing­ly with “Go placid­ly amid the noise and the haste…”, and con­tin­u­ing with a series of sage apho­risms, I assumed it to be of unknown author­ship, and of ancient, per­haps bib­li­cal, ori­gin. It was titled Desider­a­ta, which did lit­tle to dis­pel the idea of antiq­ui­ty.

Time moved on and the piece became half-for­got­ten. Many years lat­er, how­ev­er, dur­ing a fam­i­ly stay in Haworth, and brows­ing in an art shop, I came across these words again, and remarked: “My gosh, I know this poem, it used to be on my grandma’s wall!”. My beau­ti­ful and thought­ful daugh­ter, Freya, must have qui­et­ly not­ed and inter­nalised my enthu­si­asm, because when Father’s Day came around, I unwrapped a present from her to find the words of Desider­a­ta care­ful­ly, painstak­ing­ly writ­ten out, as shown below.


As you can see, unlike my grandma’s Desider­a­ta, Freya’s ver­sion sup­plied a name and date: Max Ehrmann and 1927, so I did a lit­tle research. Max Ehrmann was an Amer­i­can writer and poet, of Ger­man descent, liv­ing and work­ing in his home town of Terre Haute, Indi­ana, when he wrote Desider­a­ta (Latin for “things to be desired”). It turns out that the poem wasn’t even pub­lished dur­ing Ehrmann’s life­time; his wid­ow pub­lished it in The Poems of Max Ehrmann in 1948. Even then it remained large­ly unknown, and prob­a­bly would have stayed that way had it not become the sub­ject of a law­suit in the sev­en­ties, after it had been print­ed in a mag­a­zine with­out per­mis­sion. It was deemed by the court to have had its copy­right for­feit­ed and to be in the pub­lic domain, and this gave it the impe­tus to be print­ed in poster form and dis­trib­uted wide­ly as a set of inspi­ra­tional dic­tums; the words con­nect­ed favourably with peo­ple and end­ed up, as in my grandma’s case, on their walls.

So my assump­tion of its antiq­ui­ty was way off the mark, but it seems that I wasn’t the only one to mis­take its prove­nance: in the fifties, the rec­tor of St Paul’s Church in Bal­ti­more, Mary­land, used the poem in a col­lec­tion of devo­tion­al mate­ri­als, that he head­ed “Old St Paul’s Church, Bal­ti­more AC 1692” (mean­ing that the church had been found­ed in 1692). As the mate­r­i­al was hand­ed from one friend to anoth­er, the author­ship became cloud­ed, and a lat­er pub­lish­er would inter­pret this nota­tion as mean­ing that the poem itself had been found in Old St Paul’s Church, dat­ed 1692.

This con­fu­sion no doubt added to the charm and appeal of the poem, and the words were ripe, I sup­pose, for the inher­i­tors of the “make peace, not war” sen­si­bil­i­ty of the 1960s. In any event, its mes­sage is time­less and its words wor­thy of exam­i­na­tion to this day, par­tic­u­lar­ly at the dawn of a new year when, inun­dat­ed with bad and divi­sive news, we might focus on the final stan­za and remind our­selves that “With all its sham, drudgery, and bro­ken dreams, it is still a beau­ti­ful world.”

Now, read on…

Desider­a­ta
Go placid­ly amid the noise and the haste,
and remem­ber what peace there may be in silence.

As far as pos­si­ble, with­out sur­ren­der,
be on good terms with all per­sons.
Speak your truth qui­et­ly and clear­ly;
and lis­ten to oth­ers,
even to the dull and the igno­rant;
they too have their sto­ry.
Avoid loud and aggres­sive per­sons;
they are vex­a­tious to the spir­it.

If you com­pare your­self with oth­ers,
you may become vain or bit­ter,
for always there will be greater and less­er per­sons than your­self.
Enjoy your achieve­ments as well as your plans.
Keep inter­est­ed in your own career, how­ev­er hum­ble;
it is a real pos­ses­sion in the chang­ing for­tunes of time.

Exer­cise cau­tion in your busi­ness affairs,
for the world is full of trick­ery.
But let this not blind you to what virtue there is;
many per­sons strive for high ideals,
and every­where life is full of hero­ism.
Be your­self. Espe­cial­ly do not feign affec­tion.
Nei­ther be cyn­i­cal about love,
for in the face of all arid­i­ty and dis­en­chant­ment,
it is as peren­ni­al as the grass.

Take kind­ly the coun­sel of the years,
grace­ful­ly sur­ren­der­ing the things of youth.
Nur­ture strength of spir­it to shield you in sud­den mis­for­tune.
But do not dis­tress your­self with dark imag­in­ings.
Many fears are born of fatigue and lone­li­ness.

Beyond a whole­some dis­ci­pline,
be gen­tle with your­self.
You are a child of the uni­verse
no less than the trees and the stars;
you have a right to be here.
And whether or not it is clear to you,
no doubt the uni­verse is unfold­ing as it should.

There­fore be at peace with God,
what­ev­er you con­ceive Him to be.
And what­ev­er your labors and aspi­ra­tions,
in the noisy con­fu­sion of life,
keep peace in your soul.

With all its sham, drudgery, and bro­ken dreams,
it is still a beau­ti­ful world.
Be cheer­ful. Strive to be hap­py.

Max Ehrmann

Commentaries on excellence in art, music, film, and literature