Books to the Ceiling

Last month I wrote about the book Into the Wild. We finally had a chance to see the film last night, and I feel like my heart got broken all over again.

I was angry at Chris McCandless almost the entire time I was listening to the audiobook. He seemed like an out-of-control narcissist with impossibly grand notions about his personal destiny. Only as his sad, pathetic end became imminent did my ire begin to subside. In the film, though, right from the beginning he comes across as a rather appealing person, a free spirit with a generous heart.

Generous, that is, except where is parents were concerned. It was as if cutting off all contact with them (as well as with his sister Carine, whom he professed to love) gave him the power to hurt them that he seemed to crave. But - in recompense for what injury, exactly? In the film, the McCandlesses are shown to have engaged in some knock- down- drag-out battles when Chris and Carine were young children. (This is something I don’t remember from the book.) In addition, during the summer between his high school graduation and his freshman year at Emory University, Chris found out that his father Walt had not been fully disengaged from his first wife when he began a family with Chris’s mother Billie. (She ultimately became Walt’s second wife when he finally obtained a divorce.)

“That meant we were bastards!”, or words to that effect, are uttered at that point by Carine in a voice-over narration that I found to be one of the films few weak features. As for the implication that this revelation caused Chris to reject his parents, I don’t buy it. I think he was looking to justify a rejection that was already happening; the story of the early infidelity was as good a reason as any, in his young mind, to heap contempt on the heads of two people whom he already viewed as hopelessly compromised by their bourgeous suburban existence.

And there’s one other thing. Walt McCandless was a brilliant, accomplished engineer. I think that Chris was afraid that if he chose to compete in any way with Walt, he might not measure up. As a father, Walt McCandless appears to have been somewhat judgmental and rather stern, possibly remote in his aspect - in other words, not in the mold of the touchy-feely, postfeminist Dad. ( I just re-read the last sentence and realized that I could be describing my own father. Perhaps because I was a daughter, and a somewhat sickly one at that, I managed to get enough caring from him to satisfy my needs. He and my mother were cruelly ravaged by old age, and I drew close to him at the end. It was an unexpected gift. )

Into the Wild depicts Chris McCandless’s slow, agonizing death with unsparing realism. It was hard to watch - I was riveted but at the same time wanted desperately to avert my eyes until it was finished. My husband and I both felt that Emile Hirsch, in the title role, was completely convincing.

In her review in Salon, Stephanie Zacharek informs us that Jon Krakauer ceded his book’s film rights to Chris McCandless’s parents. I believe that those rights are worth a great deal of money, and I admire Krakauer for that generous, gracious concession. Likewise, Sean Penn deserves praise for waiting patiently until Walt and Billie McCandless were ready for the story of their son’s brief life to be told on film. Penn has amply rewarded their trust with this meticulously crafted, gorgeously photographed work.

[Emile Hirsch as Christopher Johnson McCandless]

In an effort to track to its source my preoccupation with the hymn “Amazing Grace,” my husband and I watched the film of the same name last week. I was ready for a Sunday school lesson in period costumes, but actually, we enjoyed the movie quite a bit. Its structure was somewhat confusing, and there were a few inevitable moments of didacticism, but the uncanny ability of British filmmakers to recreate - no, to channel - their own history overcame any lingering reservations.

We thought Ioan Griffudd was fine as the tireless abolitionist William Wilberforce, and it was a pleasure, as always, to see some of the lions of British acting, like Michael Gambon and Albert Finney.

[Michael Gambon as Lord Charles Fox in Amazing Grace; and as Inspector Maigret in the Mystery! production]

Gambon is my favorite Maigret, and as for Albert Finney…well, for me, he will always be the impudent, life-loving, sexy, and utterly irresistible hero of Tony Richardson’s 1963 film Tom Jones.

[Albert Finney, above left, as John Newton, William Wilberforce's pastor and composer of the hymn Amazing Grace; and below, as the irrepressible rapscallion who, in the words of his creator Henry Fielding, "was certainly born to be hanged."* ]

(From time to time, in his column for the Washington Post, Jonathan Yardley revisits the classics. Here’s his take on Tom Jones, both the novel and the film.)

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I expected to see explicit depictions of the slave trade in Amazing Grace, but there were none. Instead, scenes were described in detail horrific enough to make your blood run cold. You cannot help asking yourself how human beings could be so pitiless in their treatment of their fellow creatures. Alas, the answer, blunt and cruel, comes back readily enough: There was money in it.

In his book The Reason for God, Timothy Keller discusses the British abolition movement in a chapter entitled “The Church Is Responsible for So Much Injustice.” Keller’s thesis is that while there is truth in that statement, it is likewise true that Christianity has served to motivate believers to correct that same injustice. He notes that historians are genuinely puzzled by the drive for abolition because “…most historians believe all political behavior is self-interested.”** This movement was anything but:

“When the abolitionists finally had British society poised to abolish slavery in their empire, planters in the colonies foretold that emancipation would cost investors enormous sums and the prices of commodities would skyrocket catastrophically. This did not deter the Abolitionists in the House of Commons. They agreed to compensate the planters for all freed slaves, an astounding sum up to half of the British government’s annual budget. The Act of Emancipation passed in 1833, and the costs were so high to the British people that one historian called the British abolition of slavery ‘voluntary econoside.’

And yet they did it. Why? To rid their country of a blot on its moral conduct, and to help rid the world of a hideous evil. And, Rev. Keller avers, because they were impelled to do so by the tenets of their Christian faith.

Our library has recently acquired a new biography of William Wilberforce by William Hague. And Adam Hochschild’s Bury the Chains, which was shortlisted for the National Book Award in 2005, has long been on my (ridiculously long) to-read list.

At the conclusion of Amazing Grace, the Irish Pipe Band offers a stirring rendition of the hymn. You can see and hear it on the post Weekend Miscellany II.

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*The Fieldings were yet another example of a preternaturally gifted British family. In addition to being a novelist, Henry Fielding was also a magistrate. When he died in 1754, he was succeeded by his half-brother John. The latter was known as “the blind beak of Bow Street:” despite being without sight, he was supposedly able to identify some three thousand miscreants by their voices. Sir John Fielding is featured in an exceptionally fine series of historical mysteries written by the late Bruce Alexander.

**In an essay entitled “The Animal People,” Joy Fielding makes a similar observation concerning those who campaign for the humane treatment of animals:

“They appear to be ordinary, caring, middle-class Americans marching for justice. Yet has any group in this country ever had such an extremist agenda, based utterly on non-self-fulfillment and non-self-interest? The animal people are calling for a moral attitude toward a great and mysterious abd mute nation. Their quest is quixotic; their reasoning, assailable; their intentions, almost inarticulateable. The implementation of their vision would seem madness. But the future world is not this one. Our treatment of animals and our attitude toward them are crucial not only to any pretensions we have to ethical behavior but to humankind’s intellectual and moral evolution. Which is how the human animal is meant to evolve, isn’t it?

The complete essay can be found in Ill Nature: Rants and Reflections on Humanity and Other Animals by Joy Williams.

Last night, we finally got around to watching the “deloused” recording of one of our favorite programs, CBS Sunday Morning. What a treat was in store for Your Faithful Blogger! In a segment called “For the Books,” the perennially congenial Bill Geist visited Lloyd and Lenore Dickman. This unassuming farm couple from central Wisconsin have a collection of books that fills twelve buildings, including a former slurry tank (a structure that stores manure) and a disused schoolhouse dating back to the 1800’s.

The purpose of the segment was to entertain viewers with facts concerning the extreme unlikelihood of such an enormous quantity of books being housed in so unique a manner. The Dickmans are booksellers, but they seem sublimely indifferent to the exigencies of the business. A potential customer can be reasonably certain to gain access to this hoard on a Saturday, but on any other day of the week, you just have to hope you can find a Dickman somewhere on this vast tract who might be free to let you in, show you around, and maybe even sell you something.

As I said above, this segment was about the sheer strangeness of all those books gathered in that remote place. But, almost inadvertently I think, it was also a portrait of a marriage. Lenore Dickman obtained a doctorate after she was married - Lloyd supported her efforts wholeheartedly. When, after a hiatus, he wanted to go back to farming, she then supported him. Lloyd and Lenore Dickman come across as two people who, on the face of it, have little in common. What they do have is mutual respect, loyalty, and love. It appears to be a quietly companionable bond, built to last - something for young couples to aspire to.

The Dickmans keep a pretty low profile. Googling them produced only this video segment:

In which Your Faithful Blogger, stuck inside due to inclement weather, reads, writes, and reflects on the following:

Michael Pollan’s terrific “Why Bother?” in the April 20th “Green Issue” of The New York Times Magazine. (April 20? I’m running behind; what can I say…)

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As I gazed into the woods behind our house, I took in for the first time how quickly the trees have leafed out. There are no evergreens back there, so in the winter it’s all bare branches and spindly trunks. There’s a footpath just beyond, though, and I like to watch people walking their dogs. This becomes increasingly difficult once the leafing out process nears completion.

Anyway, all of this put me in mind of a painting by Rene Magritte. It’s called “Le blanc-seing,” which roughly translates as “free hand” or “free rein:”

I first heard of this artist when The Museum of Modern Art put on a major retrospective of his works. This was a long time ago. Magritte died in 1967; he may have been still living at the time of this exhibit. Some scoffed at the paintings, calling them gimmicky; I thought it was the most fun I’d ever had in a museum! Here’s why:

[From top to bottom: The Lovers, The Listening Room, The Sirens, Time Transfixed, The Menaced Assassin]

Born in the province of Hainaut, Rene Magritte lived for most of his life in Brussels. He’s right up there with Georges Simenon and Hercule Poirot in my personal pantheon of favorite Belgians.

[Rene Magritte, photographed by Lothar Wolleh in Brussels, 1967]

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On the DVD front, we watched one of the Ruth Rendell Mysteries, “Orchard Walls.” Set in wartime, this is a gripping tale of illicit love and lost innocence. And it features an early performance by an actress whose artless appeal has captivated fans of PBS’s Foyle’s War: Honeysuckle Weeks.

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I was deeply moved by today’s post on the blog The Other World.

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I have now encountered the use of the 2004 tsunami as a plot device in two recent works of fiction: Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri and The Water’s Lovely by Ruth Rendell. In an interesting instance of synchronicity, I encountered yet another mention of that terrible disaster yesterday in Susan Jacoby’s masterful The Age of American Unreason. In a chapter entitled “Middlebrow Culture from Noon to Twilight,” Jacoby discusses authors like Allen Drury, Irving Stone and James Michener. In a footnote, she writes:

I immediately thought of Hawaii when I read about the number of lives lost in the December 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami because many people, watching the tide suddenly recede, had walked out to see the creatures and coral formations revealed on the ocean floor, only to have the tsunami wave return with deadly force. Michener describes a similar scene in his novel.

In which your Faithful Blogger and her spouse wander through the house alternately singing “Ferry Cross the Mersey” ( See the post just prior to this one) and “Amazing Grace:”

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Horse racing is the only sport I care about. This interest is a legacy bequeathed to me by my Dad, who went to the track religiously every Saturday. (This led me as a child to believe that everyone’s father worshipped at the shrine of Belmont, Flamingo Park, Hialeah Raceway, etc. etc.)

So yesterday, we watched the Kentucky Derby and witnessed the triumph of Big Brown and the simultaneous tragedy of Eight Belles. Veterinarian Larry Bramlage called the breakdown of Eight Belles “almost inexplicable,” but according to Sally Jenkins’s angry hit-’em-where-they-live opinion piece in today’s Washington Post, it was anything but.

Big Brown, winning the Kentucky Derby

Eight Belles, as horse lovers will want to remember her

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Since leading a discussion of The Professor’s House, I’ve been needing more Willa Cather in my life. Recently I listened to a wonderful reading by Barbara McCulloh of O Pioneers. Then last night we watched the Hallmark Hall of Fame production made in 1992 and starring Jessica Lange and David Strathairn. It was, quite simply, outstanding.

O Pioneers is the story of Alexandra Bergson and her family, immigrants who came to America in the late 19th century in order to farm the rich, open prairie lands of Nebraska. The Bergsons are Swedish, but they count the French and Bohemians among their friends and neighbors. This is a tale of struggle, conflict, sorrow, and ultimately, endurance. The film brings Cather’s story vividly to life: it is beautifully acted and visually very compelling. The drama is abetted by Bruce Broughton’s surging soundtrack- maybe too surging, in some spots? - but never mind; it was great, too, Mr Broughton seems to have channeled Aaron Copland in this magisterial score, for which, BTW, he won an Emmy.

O Pioneers was shot entirely on location in the Cornhusker State. There’s plenty of “waving wheat” - the place looked gorgeous! If you have a chance to see the film, watch for the scene in which several dozen young men on horseback ride out to meet the bishop. They have come to receive his blessing and escort him safely back to their church, where is to officiate at a funeral. It is a deeply stirring sequence.

There is much great writing in the novel. I was really pleased that the film included this sentence: “The history of every country begins in the heart of a man or a woman.”

And speaking of terrific writing…

I continue to make my way, slowly and carefully, through The Age of American Unreason. Susan Jacoby’s erudite book - is it a treatise? a jeremiad, perhaps? A polemic? - demands close and careful reading, filled as it is with history, philosophy, and portraits of fascinating - and often infuriating - people.

Anyway, in order to describe certain metaphysical theories, such as social Darwinism, that fly in the face of actual facts, she came up with a phrase that I just love: “bloviating arrogance.” From now on, I shall have my antennae attuned to pick up signs of bloviating arrogance in everyday life. Something tells me I won’t have to look far!

Ever since Martin Edwards started Do You Write Under Your Own Name in October of last year, it has been one of my favorite destinations in the blogosphere. If you love crime fiction, this is a site to die for! But even if that genre is not one you favor, you can still enjoy Martin’s thoughtful observations of the cultural scene in the UK. Of course, the writing is wonderful - Martin himself writes crime fiction. If you have yet to read the three titles (so far) in his series set in England’s gorgeous Lake District, then you should rush out and get them ASAP!

Here are some of the delights you can expect to encounter on Martin’s blog:

1. Unjustly forgotten writers from the past. This entry on Margot Bennett will make you want to read her as soon as possible. Good luck trying, though; the books are out of print, at least in the U.S., and our library does not carry them. Ah, well, abebooks or interlibary loan - here I come!

2. Praise for his contemporaries. I really enjoyed this post on Simon Brett. Brett entertained us wonderfully at Claridge’s in London during our Smithsonian Mystery Tour in 2006. I enjoy his Charles Parris series; I especially recommend Murder Unprompted, which, besides being hugely entertaining, offers intriguing insights into the theater scene in England.

3. Appreciation for those writers who have recently left us. Here’s his memorial for Edward D. Hoch. Although Hoch had been writing for decades and was named Grand Master by the Mystery Writers of America in 2001, he’s never been that well known. This, I think, his because he wrote primarily short stories rather than novels. Now crime fiction lovers have simply GOT to realize that many mystery short stories are absolute jewels and eminently worthy of your attention. (It’s so much fun to get into finger-wagging nanny mode once in a while!) Writing this has reminded me of all the terrific stories I read while I was teaching a class on mystery fiction at the local community college. (Now I think about it, I kind of miss doing that…) I’ve written about Best American Mystery Stories of the Century and The Black Lizard Big Book of Pulps; in addition, I posted Mystery short stories: classics, with links to the full text of those famous tales. Here are some other anthologies that I used in that class:

The World’s Finest Mystery & Crime Stories: Second Annual Collection, edited by Ed Gorman. I particularly liked “Spinning” by Kristine Kathryn Rusch, about an obese young woman’s struggle to lose weight. A big part of her effort involves attending a “spinning (cycling) class. She describes how when she first joins the group, member stared at her grotesquely overweight body with ill-concealed disgust. At one point in her struggle, “She wanted a piece of chocolate cake so badly that it hurt….Comfort food. She wanted comfort food because she needed comforting.” Do I empathize with this poor girl or what?!

“Spinning” is the first story in this generous volume. Other outstanding entries are “Let’s Get Lost” by Lawrence Block, a true master of the form; and “The Country of the Blind” by Doug Allyn, which will appeal to fans of medieval history.

Writers of short stories can be remarkably resourceful when evoking past eras and bringing them to life in the space of relatively few pages. Anthologist Mike Ashley has been collecting these tales for a number of years in the “Mammoth”series published by Carroll & Graf. I’m especially partial to The Mammoth Book of Historical Whodunnits, published in 1993. The book is divided into four sections: The Ancient World, The Middle Ages, Regency and Gaslight, and Holmes and Beyond. Some of the standouts in this collection:

The Ancient World: “The High King’s Sword” by Peter Tremayne, and “He Came with the Rain” by Robert Hans Van Gulik, who, in addition to writing detective fiction, was an artist, translator, and celebrated Sinologist. Van Gulik’s tales of Judge Dee, an actual historical personage who was a magistrate in eighth century China, are simply astonishing. (For a great listening experience, get the recordings made by Frank Muller.)

[Judge Dee, as rendered in pen and ink by Robert van Gulik]

The Middle Ages: “The Price of Light” by Ellis Peters, of fond memory. (This is an early Brother Cadfael story.)

[Ellis Peters, with Sir Derek Jacobi as Brother Cadfael]

Regency and Gaslight: “Murder Lock’d In” by Lillian de la Torre, whose tales, now almost impossible to find, recreate the life and times of the famed eighteenth century lexicographer Samuel Johnson; “The Doomdorf Mystery” by Melville Davisson Post; and one of my all time favorites, “The Gentleman from Paris” by the endlessly cunning John Dickson Carr.

Finally, there’s The Oxford Book of English Detective Stories edited by Patricia Craig, who also contributes an insightful and enlightening introduction. The first story in this collection, “The Stir Outside the Cafe Royal,” was written around the turn of the twentieth century and concerns a female police officer who goes under cover in order to facilitate the arrest of a criminal for whom she harbors a personal animus. Clarence Rook, the (rather obscure) author, is described in Gale’s Contemporary Authors Online as “…a shadowy figure whose writing rested uneasily between fiction and journalism.”

Many splendid stories fill out this fine anthology. Arthur Morrison’s “The case of Laker, Absconded” depicts in careful detail the way in routine banking transactions were carried out in the early part of the last century. (Yes, you have to trust me here - this really is interesting!) Other stories of note: “The Oracle of the Dog” a lovely, poignant tale by G.K. Chesterton, featuring one of the earliest of the clerical detectives, Father Brown; Agatha Christie’s sensational courtroom drama “The Witness for the Prosecution;” and “Thornapple,” one of the most chilling tales ever written by that past master of the dreaded - and dreadful - outcome, Ruth Rendell.

Finally, to return to Edward D. Hoch: “Anything in the Dark,” which appears in Crime Through Time (a collection edited by Miriam Grace Monfredo and Sharan Newman) is a miniature tour de force in which the author contrives to solve two mysteries in the space of just a few pages: the disappearance of British envoy Benjamin Bathurst in Perleberg, a small city near Berlin, in 1809, and the death of Meriwether Lewis in the same year in Tennessee.

Okay - end of digression! Martin Edwards’s blog, on which you’ll also find news about crime shows on television and reflections on trends in crime fiction. And here’s a video clip of an interview with Martin about The Arsenic Labyrinth.

I’d like to thank Lourdes of Lost in Books for pointing me to this video, and also for the many terrific news items, reviews, and recommendations regularly found on her blog. And I do love the quote from Louisa May Alcott: “She is too fond of books, and it has turned her brain.” Ah, so that’s my problem…

William F. Buckley was an iconic figure for those of my generation, even if our politics were diametrically opposed to his. That wit, that urbanity, the multisyllabic vocabulary, the faux-British accent - it all added up to a package that was hard to resist.

George F. Will has a nice valedictory piece, “A Life Athwart History,” in today’s Washington Post. In it, he quotes a stanza from “Vit(ae) Summa Brevis Spem nos Incohare Longam” by Ernest Dowson. I have seen this poem before but forgotten its haunting beauty. Here it is in its entirety:

They are not long, the weeping and the laughter,
Love and desire and hate;
I think they have no portion in us after
We pass the gate.

They are not long, the days of wine and roses:
Out of a misty dream
Our path emerges for a while, then closes
Within a dream.

Poor Ernest Dowson! He was one of those wayward, sensitive souls doomed to flame out at an early age. Here is a brief, poignant memoir of his life by the poet and critic Arthur Symons.

Some will recognize the phrase “days of wine and roses” as the title of a terrific film from 1962 starring Lee Remick and Jack Lemmon. The film depicted the ravages of alcoholism in a way that has rarely been equalled, before or since. And from another poem by Dowson comes the title of an acclaimed American novel that became an even more acclaimed movie. See line 13 in “Non Sum Qualis Eram Bonae Sub Regno Cynarae.”

Ernest Dowson 1867-1900

It begins with the death of our beloved twenty-year-old 25-inch Sony Trinitron. We observe a moment of silence as this venerable, essential component of our home life is carted out the door.* Even as we say our farewells to a companion whose age exactly matches our tenure in this house, the question looms…

What next?

I should first explain that my husband Ron and I are very particular about what we watch on TV. We choose each program before hand - no casual or impulsive viewing for us! After the choice is made, Ron commences the process he calls “delousing,” namely the excising of all commercial interruptions. (His tool for accomplishing this task is a DVD-RAM recorder.) The result seemed at first a delightful novelty, as if we were watching Law and Order on PBS. Where broadcast television is concerned, we prefer crime shows, true and otherwise. Commercial DVD’s are always welcome, especially British mysteries and selected feature films.

[Best recently viewed British mystery: "Invasion," from the fourth season of Foyle's War, IMHO the best mystery series to come from the Old Country since Inspector Morse. Best recently viewed feature film: Pan's Labyrinth, a film of mindboggling originality and technical bravura - scary and at the same time very poignant.]

Okay, back to the aforementioned question. Here am I, jumping up and down and yelling,”Great! Time to get one of those huge hoggers I keep seeing in my friends’ houses! Fifty inches! Seventy-two inches! Sky’s the limit, right??!!”

Wrong…

We must first mourn the demise of the cathode ray tube, bringer of a near-perfect picture. It seems that none of the new technologies can measure up. Bigger is not necessarily better; in fact, it may be demonstrably worse. Oh dear; I can see that this is going to be a long haul.

And so begins our pilgrimage. We schlepp through Best Buy, Gramophone, Tweeter, Circuit City, Costco, and back to Best Buy. The promised land of fabulous viewing begins to seem a wasteland of imperfection. LCD? Blacks are not black enough, and colors tend to be oversaturated. Plasma? Blacks are black enough, but there’s concern that burn-in might result from watching standard definition programs on a high definition set. Rear projection? There’s often a problem with a restricted optimal viewing angle. And trust me -that’s just the tip of the iceberg. (For a useful primer on the new technology, see Amazon’s High-Def 101.)

So, while we are in a dark wood wandering (or rather, in the blinding expanse of huge desolate parking lots), what is happening on the home front?

Obviously, stop-gap measures are called for. The most logical first step: to use one of the electronic devices currently on the premises. For us, this consists of various decommissioned televisions and computer monitors. (Are other people’s houses also starting to resemble warehouses of disused electronics? This would include, of course CPU’s which cannot, alas, aid us in the present difficulty.)

First up is a Sony 19-inch professional Trinitron monitor, age eleven. Ron connects it to the recording device which will supply the tuner function. “Okay!” says he. We fire it up; it produces a desperate, wobbly image and then shuts down. Further tests confirm that it has, in fact, died. Up next: a nine-inch Sony Trinitron, age fifteen. Sure it’s got a screen slightly smaller than a cereal box - but what a picture! “Look at those colors - so true,” says Ron ruefully. “There’s simply nothing like a cathode ray tube…”

Meanwhile, our odyssey across television land continues. Occasionally we come close to deciding on a purchase, only to be warned off by something that has appeared on “the boards.” These sites, carefully monitored by Ron, contain posts which alert potential buyers to problems that have surfaced after purchase. Particularly recommended is the Audio Visual Science Forum, a real goldmine of information, much of it gained through firsthand experience.

Meanwhile, there’s been an upgrade on the home front, from nine inches to thirteen. We are currently watching TV on a 22-year-old Amiga monitor (manufactured for Amiga by Toshiba).

Ron was an early Amiga enthusiast and has never lost his respect for that most excellent machine. Alas, it proved incapable of handling the Y2K rollover. Thus it has been out of use for eight years. But guess what…It’s back! We sit before it in our darkened family room and are awestruck. “What a great picture,” sighs Ron. I cannot help but agree.

Stay tuned…

*As with computers, there are environmental issues concerning the disposal of old TV sets. See Take Back My TV for information on this topic.

The Great Films: Fifty Golden Years of Motion Pictures, by Bosley Crowther (1967)

A Girl and a Gun: The Complete Guide to Film Noir on Video, by David N. Meyer (199

Bosley Crowther reviewed movies for The New York Times from the early 1940’s to the late 1960’s. Such was his influence as a critic during those years that the producers of the 1967 film Bonnie and Clyde are said to have panicked over his negative review, fearing that it would cause people to stay away in droves. (They were wrong, of course.). I remember making my way up Fifth Avenue in New York City in 1967, stopping at Brentano’s, seeing this book, and buying it immediately - a large format soft cover book for the whopping price of $3.95!

The front and back covers alone made it irresistible.

Somehow, through forty years of frequently moving house (until 1987, when things finally stabilized), I have managed to hold on to this precious volume. It is currently somewhat tattered but still intact. Bosley Crowther’s astute and trenchant criticism (accompanied by marvelous black-and-white stills from the films he discusses) has contributed immeasurably to my lifelong movie-going enjoyment.

Leafing through The Great Films has brought back many memories. For instance, I recall that my mother could hardly wait for me to be old enough to see Camille (1936) with her. She was waiting for my romantic sensibilities to mature, I think. I’ll never forget watching it with her, and I’ll never forget Camille/Great Garbo dying in Robert Taylor’s arms as he cries out, “Don’t leave me, Marguerite!” I was in tears, as was my mother.

Here is Bosley Crowther on Marlene Dietrich’s performance in The Blue Angel (1929):

“The woman that Marlene Dietrich exudes in this dark, degenerate tale of the destruction of a German schoolmaster by a faithless cabaret girl is so far advanced beyond the limits of the sleek, husband-stealing vamps, the poignant, self-sacrificing mistresses and the shimmying bowlfuls of ‘it’ that so inadequately stated the attraction of women for men in silent films, it’s no wonder she caused a world sensation, launched Miss Dietrich on a fabulous career and became, as it were, the grandmother of a whole slew of notable screen sluts.”

Some of my other favorites from this book:

A Night at the Opera, with the incomparable Marx Brothers

The Maltese Falcon. I believe this is the scene in which Spade/Bogart taunts Elisha Cook Jr.with one of my favorite lines in crime fiction: “The cheaper the crook, the gaudier the patter.”

Eisenstein’s stunning Ivan the Terrible

Olivier’s masterful Henry V

Finally, two films that I truly treasure:

Les Enfants du Paradis (Children of Paradise), directed by Marcel Carne, was made under the extremely stressful conditions prevailing in occupied France in the closing days of the Second World War.

Through a series of stunning images linked to a medieval knight’s despairing quest, Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal (1956) forces us to face the most fundamental questions of our existence - and dares us to find the answers.

A Girl and a Gun: The Complete Guide to Film Noir on Video by David N. Meyer is a traversal of the dark world of film noir that is blessedly free of film school jargon. Meyer’s writing is witty and accessible, and he has a way of codifying the film noir sensibility that makes the appeal of this genre immediately understandable. (The book takes its title from a comment by Jean Luc Godard: “All you need to make a film is a girl and a gun.”)

From the introduction: “As purely an American art form as jazz or the Western, noir sprang from a specific set of social and creative circumstances: the end of World War II, the impact of European refugees on an American art form, the mainstream film studios’ need for a steady supply of low budgets, lurid pictures, and the ascendance of a particular writing style.”

Meyer is, of course, alluding to the clipped, highly stylized argot of the masters of hardboiled detective fiction.

Dashiell Hammett, James M. Cain, Raymond Chandler, Mickey Spillane - all wrote stories and novels that were made into classic noir films. “The writers created heroes who dealt with spiritual crisis (caused by the emptiness of Amercian middle-class life) by alternating between emotional withdrawal and attack. The refugee directors preferred a more sardonic, alienated approach.” Meyer then concludes: “The combining of these sensibilities helped create one of the great creative outpourings in American history.”

Meyer goes on to expatiate on what he considers to be the defining themes of film noir:

“No good deed goes unpunished.

A detached, ironic view is the only refuge.

Crime doesn’t pay, but normal life is an experiential/existential straitjacket.

Character determines fate.

Though love might seem to be the only redeeming aspect of human existence, it’s not.

Kicks count for something.

Alienation rules.”

The author proceeds to list seventeen titles - the “Noir Canon” - that best represent the genre. Among them are The Asphalt Jungle, Chinatown, Double Indemnity, Kiss Me Deadly, Laura, and of course, The Maltese Falcon. A more comprehensive list, with commentary and critique on each film, rounds out the book.

Some of my favorites among them:

Murder, My Sweet, starring Dick Powell

The Big Sleep, starring Lauren Bacall and Humphrey Bogart

The Sweet Smell of Success, starring Tony Curtis and Burt Lancaster (for my money, the best performance ever given by Tony Curtis)

Double Indemnity, starring Barbara Stanwyck and Fred MacMurray

And finally, a film that you could say transcends the genre by virtue not only of stunning performances by Joseph Cotten and Orson Welles but of terrific writing by Graham Greene: The Third Man.

[Left to right: Joseph Cotten, Orson Welles, Graham Greene]

Both The Great Films and A Girl and a Gun are out of print. Both can be obtained used from Amazon or AbeBooks.

I’ve written before about Inspector Morse, both the books by Colin Dexter and the television series. Now comes this delightful news item from Martin Edwards. How I wish I’d been one of the party that he accompanied to The Trout Inn! The Trout is located near Oxford, in Lower Wolvercote actually, as in TheWolvercote Tongue, one of my favorites from among the TV episodes. Morse/John Thaw can frequently be seen downing a pint at this idyllic spot on the River Thames.

As for Morse and More by Patricia Buchanan and The Oxford of Inspector Morse by Antony Richards, they can be purchased from The Inspector Morse Society.

One of the many joys of the Morse films is the way in which they are enriched and enhanced by music. This music is available on three discs, all of which I own. My favorite is Volume Three, largely because it features the stunningly gorgeous Andante movement from Brahms’s Sextet No.1, heard in the film The Day of the Devil. ( You can listen to this music on Amazon. ) I am in awe of chamber music, like this Sextet, that conveys the same power and majesty as a full orchestra.

In addition to orchestral music, chamber works, and opera from the Inspector Morse films, all three of the above-mentioned discs feature the original music composed for the series by Barrington Pheloung. It is always a pleasure, albeit a melancholy one, to hear Morse’s signature tune, with Morse code woven seamlessly into the melody.

[While trawling through the web for pictures of Barrington Pheloung, I happened upon this rather wonderful Inspector Morse Picture Gallery. ]