Detour (1946): Review

Directed by Edgar G Ulmer; written by Martin Goldsmith; starring Tom Neal (Roberts) and Ann Savage (Vera).

SPOILERS - it's difficult to write about films and books without revealing things you might prefer not to know.

Detour is a film to which many superlatives have attached themselves: 'greatest B-movie'; 'greatest film noir'; 'the cheapest really good film to come out of Hollywood'; 'the most despairing of all B-pictures'. Certainly this 'king of the cults' is no barrel of laughs.

It's got all the hallmarks of classic noir: flashback structure, voice-over narration, hard-boiled dialogue, moody, expressionist photography, femme fatale, victimised hero, a malevolent fate dragging all down to a tragic end.

The story

Roberts is a classically trained pianist eking out a living in a New York bar, where his girlfriend, Sue, also works as a singer. After she leaves to try her luck in Hollywood, Roberts follows, hitch-hiking across country. He is picked up by a flashily generous guy, Haskell, who eventually falls out of the parked car, hits his head on a rock and dies. Roberts, suddenly afraid that he might be suspected of murder, hides the body, and then steals the man's money, car and identity.

Before long he himself gives a ride to a woman, a charmless piece called Vera, who turns out to know the real Haskell, and promptly starts to blackmail Roberts. she goes on to hatch a plot whereby Roberts will use his impersonation to get hold of Haskell's late father's estate.

Another twist of fate leads to Vera's accidental death, again bearing the look of murder, and Roberts goes on the run. With anti-climactic inevitability he is picked up by the police as he walks along a dark road to nowhere in particular.

Comment

In Scarlet Street Edward G Robinson's decline is depicted in a linear progression. In Out of the Past Robert Mitchum's narration of the flashbacks leads us to the present where there is still at least the prospect of a happy resolution. In Detour, as in Double Indemnity, we begin with the hero at rock bottom, a bum, beaten and bitter.

The opening flashback scene shows Roberts and girlfriend performing in the club. She is aiming the words of her song at him, but the song is 'I can't believe that you're in love with me.' Maybe their loving smiles are just for the audience. For on their stroll home she matter-of-factly announces her departure for Hollywood. apart from a couple of shots of her at the end of a phone, we will not see her again.

Roberts hardly merits the term 'hero'. Even 'protagonist' seems too strong for this weak, sulky man. His piano-playing is excellent and you wonder why he doesn't try a little harder to make it, instead of cynically belting out Chopin to a boogie-woogie rhythm. He can't even accept a tip graciously.

His reaction to the sudden death of Haskell is an overwhelming, irrational attack of paranoia. It's here that it's important to remember that what we see is merely an illustration of what Roberts is telling us. Could it be that we are listening to his statement to the police?

Crime films of this period often use the convention of the voice-over and flashback. It gets the film off to a suitably mysterious beginning, allows for plenty of Chandleresque prose, and helps link audience and character. But it can be deceptive. Maybe, as here I suspect, we are being told, and watching, a pack of self-justifying lies.

Vera is probably the most unprepossessing dangerous females in movies. In a film noir you expect the heart of evil to be concealed in a sexy body and behind sultry eyes, and her lies to be articulated in a smokily honeyed voice. But this dame is sheer bitch, with eyes like Medusa's and a voice like a Banshee's. It takes a weird loser like Roberts to find a 'homely beauty' in her. And only a weakling with a masochistic streak would submit to her imprisonment of him. It's a grotesque parody of the marriage he claims to desire.

And then he kills her. Accidentally. Of course. It's fate, again, sticking its foot out to trip him up yet again. But this is no tragedy, as Roberts would have us believe. It is not the story of a great, even good, man brought down by 'one particular fault' and playful gods. It is the story of a weak man, who prefers sarcasm to struggle and who embraces misfortune as a method of excusing his failure.

Conclusion

I cannot help but think that much of the praise lavished on this move is inpired by admiration for a director who could produce something halfway decent inside a week with only a few thousand dollars to spend.

I'm all for not padding out films in order to stretch a thin story out to two hours, but the meagre running time of this one simply cuts the plot short. You realise with a shock that Vera's death is supposed to be the climax. 'Is that it?' you think. There's so much about her you want to know. Is she dying of consumption? Why is Roberts so passive? Is he a murderer? Why should I have to add my own value to a film to make it work.

But then I'm a sucker for old monochrome crime movies. I share that romantic admiration for the penniless director pursuing his own dark vision and struggling to create the proverbial silk purse. It's a movie for the cultist, and as a cultist, I shall continue to enjoy explaining that when you see cars driving on the wrong side of the road it's representative of the hero's inner confusion, face with a meaningless and dissembling universe. Obvious, really.

Shakespeare: sonnet 99

Quiz question: Which Shakespeare sonnet has 15 lines? We’d better make it a tie-breaker. Nearest one to it.

Answer: Number 99.

The froward violet thus did I chide:

Sweet thief, whence didst thou steal thy sweet that smells,
If not from my love’s breath? The purple pride
Which on thy soft cheek for complexion dwells
In my love’s veins thou hast too grossly dyed.

The lily I condemnèd for thy hand,
And buds of marjoram had stol’n thy hair;
And roses fearfully in thorns did stand,
One blushing shame, another white despair;

A third, nor red nor white, had stol’n of both
And to his robb’ry had annex’d thy breath;
But, for his theft, in pride of all his growth
A vengeful canker eat him up to death.

More flowers I noted, yet I none could see
But sweet or colour it had stol’n from thee.

As you’d expect literary critics spend time arguing about whether it was just a draft that Shakespeare would have ‘corrected’ if he’d got round to it. As far as I’m concerned it’s a finished poem and if Shakespeare wanted to add a line, why not? He was Shakespeare. In fact, the sonnet proper begins at line 2, line 1 being a mere introduction or title.

The poem is a conventional comparison of the loved one’s beauty to that of flowers. The original conceit, if original it be, is that the flowers have themselves stolen the attractive qualities of the loved one.

Thus the violet has stolen the sweet smell of the lover’s breath (that must have been a rare quality in Shakespeare’s time), and its complexion pilfered from her/his own blood; the lily has purloined the white hands, and marjoram the hair (it might help if I knew what marjoram looked like). Roses are burdened with guilt for their crime; one has even been condemned to death for it.

I don’t think it’s one Will’s best. It’s a bit contrived and repetitive, and it’s basically a rewrite of Henry Constable’s sonnet, 'My Lady’s Presence'. You can read that one here:

http://www.dindragoste.ro/love/my-ladys-presence-makes-roses-red.php

For a more detailed analysis of Shakespeare's technique, try this:

http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Troy/4081/99c.html

Boo-boo-bi-doo!

I heard once that Tim Rice, lyricist and cricket-lover once quoted as his favourite line in popular music: ‘I’d like to help you, son, but you’re too young to vote.’

That’s from Eddie Cochran’s Summertime Blues and I was reminded of it the other day when I heard Leonard Cohen on the radio talking about songwriting. He claimed that his own favourite line was ‘The moon stood still on Blueberry Hill.’ And who was it who said that the best line in all popular music was Johnny Cash’s ‘I killed a man in Reno, just to see him die?’

Naturally this led me to start jotting down some of my own favourites.

The first that came to mind was a line I’ve quoted before here is the one from Hank Williams’ I’m so Lonesome I Could Cry, namely ‘The moon just went behind a cloud to hide his face and cry,’ which I find terribly sad and evocative. To me, it’s all the more so, because Hank Williams does not strive to be ‘poetic’, in the way that Cohen himself, say, or Bob Dylan could be accused of doing.

I always liked Dylan’s line from Don’t Think Twice – ‘I gave her my heart, but she wanted my soul.’ As for Cohen, he wrote, in Bird on a Wire, about being like ‘a drunk at a midnight choir’ and ‘I have tried in my way to be free.’ That in turn reminds me of Kris Kristofferson’s Me and Bobby McGee with its wonderful line, ‘Nothing ain’t worth nothing, but it’s free.’

There was a time when I was always quoting Kristofferson. Sunday Morning, Coming Down is an all-time favourite, for I’ve endured many a long, lonely empty Sunday myself. And I wasn’t even ‘coming down’. ‘The beer I had for breakfast wasn’t bad; so I had one more for dessert.’

I’ve realised that this exercise can be very revealing. Not just that I don’t go for rock music, but that I seem to be stuck in the 1960s, nursing a rather pessimistic approach to life. What does it say about me when I cite Cohen again? ‘I was looking for someone with lines in her face.’

So, what about favourite lines that are a little more positive? How about:

‘I love a good bum on a woman. It makes my day.’

Thus Jake Thackray opens one of his wittiest songs, On Again. He goes on to use the expression ‘a posteriori’ to provide a very clever rhyme and pun. That sort of thing impresses me, simple soul that I am.

I’ll get round to being positive in a moment, but allow myself one more snatch of misogyny, namely ‘Why can’t a woman be more like me?’ Actually, that’s irony, not misogyny.

It’s always worth checking out ‘The Great American Songbook’. Before I do, though, I’ll mention the song I’m listening to at this very moment, ‘Je ne regretted rien', by Edith Piaf. How can you not respond to that voice, its tremulous strength and desperate defiance? They say the film about her, La Vie en Rose, is a disappointment, by the way.

What about the child-like exuberance of ‘You make me want to go and bounce the moon Just like a toy balloon’ from You Make Me Feel So Young; or, ‘I’ve got you under my skin;’ or ‘Pick myself up, dust myself off and start all over again.’

All of those are remarkable for their artful simplicity. Phrases that are used as clichés every day are made, with the aid of music, fresh and full of delight. In popular music, love is so often a meaningless concept, or a reason for despair, but here it’s fun and happiness. ‘Ho, ho, ho! Who’s got the last laugh now?’

Think of the sincerity in ‘Ah, but you’re lovely, Just the way you look tonight’; and ‘You look wonderful tonight. Even ‘I believe in miracles – you sexy thing,’ and ‘You’re simply the best.’

And, as I think of someone now, all I can say is, ‘Isn’t she lovely?’

A Bowl of Cherries

I started this last week.

The first thing I heard on the news this morning was that some government watchdog had banned the proposed re-showing of the ‘Go to work on an egg’ adverts with Tony Hancock, first shown 50 years ago, because they ‘don’t promote a balanced diet.’ As a lover of eggs, as well as Tony Hancock, I was moved to publish a rant about the idiocy of the judgment and the fact that we’ve actually got a body that has the authority to make such judgments.

Read about it here:

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/article-23401245-details/'Go%20To%20Work%20On%20An%20Egg'%20advert%20banned%20for%20failing%20to%20promote%20balanced%20diet/article.do

I shall make a mess of hiding that link. So I won’t try.

But I decided not to. Rant, that is. I’ve been doing too much moaning recently. I must stop getting wound up by split infinitives and the European Union, by Islam and women wearing flip-flops, by people ordering hot chocolate in the pub and God’s botched attempt to create a universe.

Morning

Today I’m going to list all the things that have made me happy. And the first, believe it or not, was waking up at 5.30 am. I love that time of day. It’s quiet and peaceful, and after last night’s thunderstorm – something else I revelled in, even though I was out in it – the air was fresh and cool. The birds were singing outside with tremendous exuberance. I can’t recognise the individuals’ songs, but no matter. Together, they form some spontaneous and accidental choir, singing hymns to who knows what. The romantic in me says it must be more than territory and mating. But then the romantic in me – no, I’m not going there.

I wonder if my thrushes are out there waiting to say good morning. But before I go out, I shall watch those old adverts on the Egg Information Board’s website. They don’t come much better than Tony Hancock, even though he was a grumpy old soul.

The ‘Listen Again’ facility is one of the best things about owning a computer, and I used it earlier to hear Round Britain Quiz on Radio 4. The BBC website even lists the questions in case you want to have a go at them yourself.

Now that’s a quiz I’ve always liked. I suppose it is the kind of thing that appeals to a cruciverbalist and general knowledge magpie.

As I walked to the bus stop, I stopped to look at the thrushes, at least three of them. They flew off, not far, just enough to feel safe. I notice they fly close to the ground as a rule, but swoop up to the top of a wall when they want to keep an eye on me. A blackbird was sitting on the highest part of the roof, singing his heart out.

I like travelling by bus. I know buses are a source of much complaint (I’ve an unpublished blog somewhere which catalogues the sins of passengers, subdivided by age, sex and socio-economic group), and I know I should walk more, but on the bus I get the chance to read. It’s amazing how much I get through on my daily journeys. I’ve laughed out loud at Tom Sharpe, spluttered angrily at Guardian leaders, sighed more in sorrow than anger at the idiocies of the local paper. I’ve been had to wipe away a furtive tear, but I forget what caused that. I’ve just finished Violet Bonham Carter’s biography of Churchill, and started Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion is next.

It’s only 11 am and already a lot to be cheerful about. Wait till I get to the pub.

Afternoon

The wine festival is over, but that’s not a complaint. I find wine – red, full-bodied and fruity preferred – a great pleasure, but only if it’s occasional. I’ve recently been drinking a rather nice Rioja as well as my usual favourite, Chateau Neuf du Pape, but they are best accompanying food. In fact I’ve suggested to the pub that at the next festival they should sell some decent cheese – Stilton – and crusty bread to go with such wines. I’ve found Villa Maria is a good red wine to drink unaccompanied.

Beer, of course, is the thing. You know where you are with a pint of beer. Spirits go down too quick, and unless you want to get drunk in a hurry, are an expensive brevity. Rather like Lord Chesterfield’s comments to his son about sex. Actually, not like it at all.

Lingering over a few pints and doing The Times crossword is a civilised way of spending an hour or two, or three, because some crosswords are a three-pint problem. Solved in partnership – the only way for me – they lend themselves to conversation, interspersed with long pauses for thought and observation of the passing world. ‘Quinquagesima’ was one of today’s answers, a word I know only because of being sent to confirmation classes many years ago. Parents today send their children to a family planning clinic or MacDonald’s, but I was learning the difference between Quinquagesima and Quadragesima. Not for the C of E things like irresistible grace and justification by faith, just Quinquagesima and the difference between a bishop and a deacon.

I had to persuade my companion that there is such word as ‘brouhaha’, but we were both proud of guessing correctly that there is such a word as ‘esurient’, later confirmed as meaning ‘greedy’.

Evening

The best reason of all to be cheerful, tonight, but that’s my business.

Apart from that I’ve pondering all the cheery things I haven’t done today. No Jerry Lee Lewis, no John Wayne, no steak and chips, no cat, no poetry read or written, no Sopranos or Prison Break. I wonder if I turn all these treats into a personal version of Reasons to be Cheerful.

And to finish the day, a large meal of toast and scrambled eggs.

Letters to my MPs

For the second time in my life I have received a letter bearing the distinctive portcullis crest of the House of Commons.

When I arrived home yesterday I was told that there was ‘an official-looking letter’ awaiting me. Now, a pessimist would think that the Child Support Agency or the DWP had finally caught up with him, but, ever the optimist, I naturally assumed that one of my Premium Bonds had at last won me a million pounds.

But no. Instead this was the second time in my life that I have received a letter bearing the distinctive portcullis crest of the House of Commons.


THE FIRST TIME was a reply from Richard, later Sir Richard, Body, MP for Boston. It was around the time Edward Heath was traitorously doing what Napoleon and Adolf Hitler had failed to do, namely hand over UK sovereignty to a European empire. Strong words, I know, but I feel strongly about it.

I wrote to Body, MP for Boston and therefore mine, who was one of the few anti-Common Market MPS on the Tory benches, encouraging him to stand firm.

By this time I was a regular voting Conservative supporter, but in 1974 I voted Labour purely on the basis of their promise to hold a referendum on continued membership of what was then called the EEC, or maybe the EC. The name kept changing in order to downgrade the economic element of the ‘project’.

It was never just economics, of course, whatever Ted Heath and the eurofanatics would have us believe. Two things have stuck in my mind from all the arguments in the early 70s about Europe. One was Ted Heath patronisingly telling us that we would still be able to drink tea. And saying that sovereignty was worth ‘sharing’ – ‘shared sovereignty’? Now there’s an oxymoron, and as daft an idea as a shared bank account – in order to gain some sort of commercial advantage. In other words, sell your birthright for a mess of potage.

And here we go again. The perfidious constitution is likely to be slipped in through the back door, disguised as ‘an amending treaty’. We are told that the ‘constitutional elements’ will be dropped, namely the anthem, the flag and the motto. They’ll all still be used, as they increasingly have been, but it won’t be written down anywhere. I think we’re back to tea-drinking here, because it appears that a log-term president, a foreign minister and an extension of qualified majority voting and a reduction in the right of veto will be there. And by this sleight of hand we will be denied a referendum, which would undoubtedly be negative.


MY MORE RECENT LETTER was from Douglas Hogg, whom I e-mailed about the old Ghurkha VC who wished to resettle in Britain and benefit from better medical attention. I wrote to protest at the Foreign Office’s denial of his request. As it happened, the FO recanted pretty quickly.

Hogg’s full title is ‘The Right Honourable Douglas Hogg, QC, MP, and Viscount Hailsham.’ This was on the compliments slip attached to his letter and reminded me of the days when I first became interested in politics. This was 1963, (as it happens also the year when one of my greatest friends was born), when the Conservative government was not only tottering with fatigue and scandal but also found itself without a leader.

Douglas Hogg’s father, Quintin, took advantage of the new law allowing him to disclaim his peerage, so that he could run for the Tory leadership. It didn’t do him any good, because the Earl of Home ‘emerged’ as the new and short-lived Prime Minister. He waited until he succeeded before giving up his peerage. A more circumspect character, it would appear. I rather think that Quintin’s action counted against him, because it wasn’t really the done thing to run quite so blatantly for office.

However, he went on to sit in the Commons and, when he was appointed Lord Chancellor, he had to be given a life peerage because a peerage, once renounced, is lost for your lifetime. I always thought it was gone forever, but not so. It is revived for your heir. Douglas, himself an MP when his father died in 2001, succeeded as the third Viscount but was able to remain an MP because by this time a peer no longer had the automatic right to sit in the House of Lords. I suppose if Douglas is ever rewarded with a seat there when he retires he will have to be made a Life Peer and end up with two titles.

Another point of interest, to me at least, is that the Hoggs rotate christian names - Douglas, Quintin – as the Churchills alternate Winston and Randolph. Nice idea.

Available for Comment

I see that Tony Blair, obviously de-mob happy, has launched an assault on the media, calling them a pack of feral animals, or some such. The fact that he was guiltier than most of news management and the curse of the sound-bite does not alter the fact that he’s damned right. If politicians had any guts they would not give a fig for the newspapers, because no-one with any intelligence takes any notice of them. (Aye, there’s the rub).

I have often criticised the media, both TV and newspapers, but the comedy show Broken News did it best. They hardly needed to exaggerate to lampoon the relentless trivialisation and sensationalism that we have to suffer when all we want is a briefing on the day’s important events.

It’s a salutary lesson to satirists, unfortunately, that such programmes have no effect. Producers, presenters and reporters continue blithely churning out superficial material, mixing news and comment, begging questions and constantly taking the adolescent attitude that the only way to show independence is criticism and carping.

Why does TV news have to have two presenters, pronouncing one sentence each, the authoritative elder man and the adoring bimbo – look at camera, look at partner, look at notes, speak . . . and again.

Why did something happen ‘back’ in 2006. Why is the Gordon Brown ‘down’ in Devon today or ‘up’ in Scotland, and if I want more information, why is it ‘over’ on BBC2, or obtainable by pressing ‘that’ red button. We don’t have mothers; we have ‘mums’, whose babies ‘weigh in’ at ‘just’ five pounds. Snooker players ‘crash out’ of the World Championship or win it at the ‘first time of asking’. And so on.

But what has been amused irritation became such anger yesterday that I stormed out the house and slammed the door.

I was watching ITV’s Six O’clock News. I should have known better. Even Mark Austin’s ill-fitting suits annoy me and why the hell can’t Mary Nightingale stop walking about? The lead story was, as it should be, the murder of PC John Terry. A simple statement of the facts would have been adequate, but instead we ‘go over to our reporter in Luton,’ who delivers a clutch of clichés designed to end in the words ‘a broken family’, so that – bang – they can appear on the screen as a title: A BROKEN FAMILY. And then there are ten minutes of flowers and widow’s tears. Who advised that poor woman to appear at a press conference just hours after her husband’s death? To these media ghouls, it’s just another story, for all their cant about human interest and the public’s right to know.

Bugger the public.

'Educational Apartheid?'

MY CURRENT READING matter for bus journeys is Violet Bonham Carter’s memoir of Winston Churchill. Lady Violet was a friend of Churchill and, as the daughter of Prime Minister Asquith, knew just about everybody who was anybody at the time.

Apart from having an insider’s view, she brings a good understanding of the issues and intrigues of what were turbulent political times. And she writes extremely well too. In those days people who did write, always wrote well.

I’ve reached the point where Churchill has left the Conservatives and thrown in his lot with the Liberals. His reward after a couple of years is a Cabinet post, namely President of the Board of Trade.

Lady Violet quotes extensively from a speech Churchill always considered one of his best. I particularly like this passage:

‘Socialism seeks to pull down wealth; Liberalism seeks to raise up poverty [I guess Toryism just wanted things to stay the same]. Socialism would destroy private interest; Liberalism would preserve them . . . by reconciling them with public right. Socialism would kill enterprise; Liberalism would rescue it from the trammels of privilege. Socialism assails the pre-eminence of the individual . . . Socialism exalts the rule; Liberalism exalts the man . . .’

THESE WORDS CHIMED with my reaction to an item on the increasingly tabloid Today Programme. The presenter talked of ‘educational apartheid’ in relation to a recent report by the Centre for Longitudinal Studies. Now, there’s a name that evokes navigation, but whether the CLS knows where it’s going is a moot point.

It has come up with the startling fact that children from ‘disadvantaged’ families get off to a worse educational start then those from ‘privileged’ backgrounds. It seems a bit vague on detail when defining ‘disadvantaged’, which can mean having ill-educated parents, or ‘poor’ parents, whatever that means.

It’s just the way these things are reported that irritates me. For example, this stark division between disadvantaged and privileged – ‘apartheid – as if there’s no gradation between the two. And no mention of the many exceptions, the father who wants his child to do well at school and not spend his life in a routine job; the mother who works to pay for piano lessons. And what about the families which are poor despite being well-educated?

What I dislike most of all, though, is the use of this word ‘privileged’. It’s a loaded word. We are conditioned to believe that privilege is unfair, as indeed it is in so many cases. But it is hardly unfair that one’s parents don’t have a lot of money. Unlucky maybe, but not unfair.

The expression ‘middle-class’ is bandied about more often these days, it seems to me, with all its negative connotations. I’ve never really understood why being middle-class is so despised. In fact, I’ve never really understood exactly what is meant by it. Is it money? So an illiterate plumber on a hundred grand a year qualifies but an unemployed graduate doesn’t? The type of job? So a librarian is in and a Premiership footballer isn’t? Education? Moral standards? Does believing in marital fidelity and opposing divorce make a Roman Catholic bricklayer middle-class? Does the fact that he is a Maoist make a brain surgeon working-class?

IT'S ALL NONSENSE. And so is the insidious campaign to make people feel guilty because they want to improve themselves and the lot of their families. The real division is not between those parents who are privileged and disadvantaged, but between those who care and those who don’t give a damn. People shouldn’t feel bad because they talk to their children as if they are intelligent beings, instead of telling the ‘little ****s to shut the **** up. They shouldn’t be seen as villains because they tell their children that porridge comes from oats or that Paris is the capital of France.

The guilt is on the heads of those who abuse their children with lack of discipline, lack of encouragement, and lack of ambition. Those are the sins which are visited on the children even to the seventh generation. And there’s not a thing the government can do about it.

And now I shall go to the pub and indulge in the appalling middle-class habit of drinking wine and, like a good bourgeois, do the Time crossword.

The Logo

So this is what all the fuss is about.

Just to be awkward, I rather like it. It does its job. It's immediately identifiable, memorable and conveys the right information. Using the figures '2012' is a simple and effective idea.

Obviously, it's ludicrous that it cost £400,000 and took a year to produce, and you can argue that it's unnecessary in the first place. You can also argue that the Olympics shouldn't be coming to London at all. More than that you can argue that the Olympic Games themselves are a monument to human wishful thinking.

The criticism was so, so predictable. People are even complaining that looking at the logo is causing epileptic seizures. God, give me strength! There is something in our national psyche that expects and I think even wants things to go wrong. Every news item seems to be not so much about disasters, but perceptions of disaster and prophecies of doom.

Even now, as I write, I'm listening to a lot of moaning about the NHS. Yesterday, 'experts' were fretting that children were not playing outside enough and that the 'middle classes' were drinking too much. England, of course, are going to play badly tonight - they haven't trained on the Tallyn pitch, a matter of great concern to the pundits.

Not to mention the new Cold War.

Sassoferrato's 'The Virgin in Prayer'

To stumble across something beautiful or otherwise remarkable, something of whose existence you were previously ignorant, is one of those little pleasures you get in life now and again.

It happened to me when I first saw a film called The Scarlet Empress, read the novel Madame Bovary, and heard that aria from Don Giovanni which was used in Kind Hearts and Coronets.

There was that time an eagle owl swooped low over my head, when an A4 locomotive powered past, less than three yards from me. Lindsay Duncan, when I saw her for the first time in TV's GBH, was a revelation.

Such experiences are similar to falling in love except, of course, they have no down side.

I had never heard of the seventeenth century Italian artist Sassoferrato, when I came across his painting of The Virgin in Prayer in London’s National Gallery. I was pretty impressed and I wasn’t the only one.

It must have been the colour that caught my eye first. Black, white, blue red, bold and bright. The girl’s white headscarf is in stark contrast to the black background. There is something theatrical in that setting, and the ultramarine cloak and red tunic are simple but actually rather stylish. I am always impressed by the technical skill of an artist’s realistic rendering of the folds of clothing and this is no exception. Their softness is quite tactile.

The painting is small, about 2 feet by 2 feet 6 inches. I had just seen Ruben’s Samson and Delilah and The Massacre of the Innocents side by side, and in comparison with their gorgeous detail and scale, this work is so direct and accessible.

But it is the face of the girl that is the true beauty of the work. Her eyes are not quite closed and there is the faint possibility of a smile on her lips. As far as I’m concerned this is not ‘The Virgin’, an object of superstitious idolatry, but a young girl. She may appear to be praying, but her mind seems to be elsewhere. She could as easily be reading a book. The tilt of her head, the shadow of the headdress, the downcast eyes, the faint smile, the youth, the smooth blushing cheeks – there’s nothing religious about this painting.

Some critics might say that the composition leads the eye to the hands joined in prayer, but surely it is the other way around. For this is not religious art. I doubt if there is any such thing. There are paintings whose subject is religion, just as there are paintings where the subject is flowers or racehorses or swimming pools. So, what’s the theme?

It hasn’t got one. All an artist does is use skill, technique and effort to create what nature does without any effort at all.

I'm not laughing

I AM NO humorist but I have read about one or two of the tricks that jokesters and wits use to create a joke.

For example, start at the end of the joke with, say, a well-known phrase, such as the standard phrases we hear at the end of news broadcasts.

So, ‘police have nothing to go on’ can be placed at the end of spoof report on the theft of lavatory pans. Or ‘police are looking into it’ will close a report on the discovery of a consignment of pornography. Or, ‘government steps in’ in response to a sewage leak in Scunthorpe. (It’s never a bad idea to include Scunthorpe. Wigan’s good too; so is Tunbridge Wells in the right context).

Another trick is one that Oscar Wilde used quite frequently, namely that of turning a phrase, preferably a cliché or pompous statement, on its head. Thus, ‘drink is the curse of the working classes’ becomes ‘work is the curse of the drinking classes.’ I particularly like that one for some reason. Another one of the same type is 'If one tells the truth, then sooner or later one will be found out.'

IT’S NO JOKE though what I’ve heard coming out of ministerial mouths recently. That old Stalinist, John Reid, for example, reacted to the disappearance of a few control order suspects – sheer incompetence on the part of the authorities – by calling yet again for 90 day detention powers. Gordon Brown disabused us of any hopes of a revival of civil liberties by echoing Kommissar Reid’s remarks. Even in his political death throes, Tony Blair is calling for a return to the old ‘sus laws’, allowing the police to stop anyone on the street and ask impertinent questions. That will fit nicely with ID cards. ID cards! Christ, even dogs don’t need licenses any more.

We in this country have blithely disregarded the subtle slicing away of our freedoms for years. We can’t visit a pub or a shop or walk down the street or drive a car without appearing on CCTV; our e-mails, phone calls and text messages are monitored by GCHQ; the police are building up a DNA bank of innocent people; rape trials are being rigged in favour of the complainant and double jeopardy is disappearing fast. Forget habeas corpus.

WHY do we put up with the death of our democracy by a thousand cuts? Partly laziness and complacency, partly because of the belief that’s been allowed to grow that government is responsible for everything. Name any problem and we expect a solution from the government.

Yesterday, for example, the head of some government agency outlined her plans to improve standards of courtesy. She actually recommended that we each ‘do a good deed every day.’ Can you believe it?

But the main reason why we tamely submit is fear. Fear of crime, fear of illegal immigration, fear of paedophiles, and fear of terrorism. Fear subtly promoted by government whose very nature is to garner increasing power to itself. Elizabeth I had her Jesuits, William Pitt had Boney, Lloyd George and Churchill had fifth columnists and McCarthy had a red under every bed. Tony Blair has Osama bin Laden, who so far has killed fewer of us in his whole campaign than we have ourselves on the roads of Lincolnshire.

I THINK Oscar would have said that we have been lulled into a false sense of insecurity.

Some Character Actresses

Heaven Can Wait

Dir. Ernest Lubitsch, 1943
Starring Don Ameche, Gene Tierney, Charles Coburn, Laird Cregar, Marjorie Main, Spring Byington, Eugene Pallette.

This movie is a one of those delightful, whimsical comedies that Ernest Lubitsch made so well. What a civilised, sophisticated director he was.
The film opens with Don Ameche, recently deceased, presenting himself in what turns out to be an antechamber to Hell, believing that this is where he should be, considering the pleasantly unproductive and politely philanderous life he has led.

Asked by ‘His Excellency’, presumably Satan himself and played with great charm by Laird Cregar, what crimes he has committed, he acknowledges that he can think of none. But he confesses that his whole life has been ‘one long misdemeanour.’

One of the joys of the film is the number of beloved character actors who appear. Charles Coburn, the old codger who lusted after Marilyn Monroe in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes; Eugene Pallette, who was the brilliantly transatlantic Friar Tuck to Errol Flynn’s Robin Hood; and two of my favourite Hollywood old bats.

Forgive my less than gallant description of those actresses who because of shape, plainness or age were condemned to supporting their more glamorous sisters, in this case none less than Gene Tierney, and as often or not stole the show from them.

Heaven Can Wait features Spring Byington, so often the rich middle-aged matron trained only for gossip, prurience and fits of the vapours. In Jezebel she has a cliché to twitter for every occasion.

Spring’s ‘long-term companion’, Marjorie Main, by contrast, is from the ‘tough old boot’ school. She played pioneer women like ‘Ma Kettle’ or slum mothers such as her role as Humphrey Bogart’s in Dead End. Contrary to her screen image, in real life she usually wore white gloves to protect her from germs and often interrupted filming to communicate with her dead husband.

I first came across Marjorie in The Women, the 1939 romantic comedy in which all 160 roles were played by women. I’m told that even the animals featured were female. (Of course, the subject is men, the theme is men, the dialogue concerns men, and it was directed by a man, sort of, George Cukor. But there we go). In the opening credits the leading actresses are represented by animals and if I remember rightly Marjorie’s name appeared over a shot of a cow. So either she was a good sport or had a very bad agent.

In Heaven Can Wait Marjorie is once again involved with cows, being the wife of Eugene Pallette’s beef baron. Cue lots of marital bickering and Eastern jokes about Kansas.

That leads me on to Missouri-born Jane Darwell, who had a Spring Byington type role in Gone With the Wind but whom I recall mainly as a John Ford stalwart, playing eccentric wives, Mormons, randy spinsters, etc. But her great moment was as Ma Joad in Ford’s The Grapes of Wrath, for which she won a well-deserved supporting actress Oscar. To be honest it feels more like a leading role to me.

My favourite moment from the film is a dialogue-free scene where Ma is burning bits and pieces that she cannot take on the long journey to from Oklahoma to California. Little nick-nacks, sentimental junk, a postcard from St Louis, and a pair of ear-rings she holds up to her fat, old face, remembering her youth and happier times. It’s very moving and the addition of Red River Valley on the soundtrack makes it heart-breaking.

There are only so many roles like that and Jane subsided back into small roles and TV westerns. Her last film role was as the Birdwoman in Mary Poppins. I see that she once played the ‘first witch’ in a TV version of Macbeth. Difficult to imagine such a friendly witch.

The greatest witch of all time is Margaret Hamilton’s Wicked Witch of the West in The Wizard of Oz. ‘I’ll get you, my pretty, . . . .and your little dog too.’ Her character was voted fourth in an AFI poll of the greatest movie villains, after Hannibal Lecter, Norman Bates and Darth Vader.

Margaret never amounted to much after that.

Agnes Moorehead ended up as a witch too, Endora, in the TV series Bewitched. Playing Elizabeth Montgomery’s mother, who actually likes being a witch, unlike her would-be reformed daughter. She really is the mother-in-law from hell. The series gives more than a nod, by the way, to another Lubitsch film, I Married a Witch.

Her dark, harsh features suited shrewish roles and precluded her from leading roles, although in Dark Passage, with Bogart and Bacall, she is supposed to some sort of allure. I remember her as a miserable old woman in Pollyanna, who is reformed by the little brat’s infuriating cheerfulness, instead of strangling her.

She first appeared courtesy of Orson Welles in Citizen Kane and received an Oscar nomination for her performance as Aunt Fanny in Welles’ next film, The Magnificent Ambersons. Lonely, frustrated, mocked, starved of love and denied opportunity to show it, Fanny is memorable and tragic. Agnes gives us a truly brilliant and moving portrayal in a lovely, rather overlooked film. Now I’ve reminded myself of it, I shall go and watch it.

But not before paying tribute to my personal favourite, Margaret Wycherley (pictured), who I am surprised to discover was born British. She appears in Hawks’ Sergeant York, as Gary Cooper’s mother, poor, hard-working and devoutly praying for her wayward son. But there’s no sentimentality in White Heat. Her Ma Jarrat to James Cagney’s Cody is a she-wolf of a woman, cunning and shrewd, suspicious eyes peering out from a lean, pinched face. Cody is merely mad, but Ma embodies evil and perverted maternal love.

There are dozens more, of course, in the gallery of middle-aged actresses who add so much to the texture of great films with little recognition. And no time for the matrons that Hitchcock loved to terrorise.

If, like me, you think it 's the supporting actors that give class to movies, here's a site you might want to visit:

http://www.dougmacaulay.com/kingspud/sel_by_actor_index_1.php