The main source of the Cubs' curse was the fans themselves. They are too loyal.
--Jerry Useem, The Atlantic, July/August 2016
I've heard lots of reasons over the years why the Cubs have not won a World Series since 1908, though the one to which I gave the most credence was that since the Cubs played during the day the players should have treated it like a day job and they did not, carousing all night and showing up with hangovers. Now. according to a recent study by University of Chicago economist Tobias Moskowitz, the Cubs fans are too loyal, they show up whether the team wins or not. Owner Phil Wrigley in the mid-1930's started emphasizing "the sunshine and the relaxation" of a day at the ballpark, planting ivy on the Wrigley Field outfield wall and constructing the hand-operated scoreboard. To me it is strange that Useem seems to think this is a bad thing! A day at Wrigley field is a delight; after all, even the best teams lose a third of the time or more.
Now the Cubs have a new owner, Tom Ricketts, who is trying to win, having hired Theo Epstein to run things after Epstein changed things for the Red Sox. The Cubs are leading their division, hiring new players and playing more night games. But is this a good thing? I enjoy going to Yankee and Mets games, as well as to the Staten Island and Brooklyn minor league teams and it is generally irrelevant to me where these teams are in the standings. Of course I like a good, well-played game, but the importance of "winning" has already ruined the Tour de France and the Olympics and has done plenty of harm to other sports, including baseball, with its steroid scandals. Is it too much to ask at this point that one just enjoy the beauty of the game?
Wednesday, June 29, 2016
Tuesday, June 28, 2016
Turner Classic Movies, July 2016
If the heroes of Ford are sustained by tradition, and the heroes of Hawks by professionalism, the heroes of Walsh are sustained by nothing more that a feeling for adventure.
Constructed partly as allegorical Odysseys and partly as floating poker games where every character took turns at bluffing about his hand until the final showdown, Boetticher's Westerns expressed a weary serenity and moral certitude that was contrary to the more neurotic approaches of other directors on this neglected level of the cinema.
The eight films Anthony Mann made with James Stewart are particularly interesting today for their insights into the uneasy relationships between men and women in a world of violence and action.
--Andrew Sarris, The American Cinema (Dutton, 1968)
There are many Westerns on Turner's schedule in July and I recommend all of those by Ford, Hawks, Walsh, Boetticher, and Mann. My own favorites are Ford's The Searchers, 1956, being shown on July 5; Boetticher's Ride Lonesome, 1959, on July 6; Walsh's They Died with Their Boots On, 1941, July 8; Mann's The Man From Laramie, 1955, July 10; Hawks's Rio Bravo 1959, July 20. Other Westerns I recommend are Sergio Leone's The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, 1968, on July 19 and Sam Peckinpah's moving and funny The Ballad of Cable Hogue, 1970 on July 6, as well as George B. Seitz's elegant tribute to the American Indian, The Vanishing American, 1925, on July 5.
Other movies on Turner in July:
Fritz Lang's fatalistic period piece, Moonfleet, 1955, on July 2
Three intelligent comedies on July 8: The Lady Eve, 1941, and Sullivan's Travels,1942, both by Preston Sturges and Chaplin's Modern Times, 1936
July 9 has James Whale's The Great Garrick, 1937 about 18th C actor David Garrick and on the 10th is Robert Hamer's pessimistic It Always Rains on Sunday, 1949. Also on the 10th is D.W. Griffith's terrific Orphans of the Storm, 1921 and Blake Edwards's corrosive comedy about Hollywood. S.O.B.,1981
On the 13th is Nicholas Ray's modern Western, The Lusty Men, 1952, and on the 15th is Lamont Johnson's One on One, 1977. as well as Mitch Leisen's effective soap opera To Each His Own, 1946.
On the 17th is Preston Sturges's witty The Palm Beach Story, 1942, and on the 18th is Jacques Tourneur's intense film noir, Out of the Past, 1947.
On the 22nd is Walsh's period comedy with James Cagney and Olivia DeHavilland (who turns 100 this year). The Strawberry Blonde, 1941; on the 26th is Buster Keaton's Go West, 1925, and on the 30th is Don Siegel's great crime film The Lineup, 1955
Constructed partly as allegorical Odysseys and partly as floating poker games where every character took turns at bluffing about his hand until the final showdown, Boetticher's Westerns expressed a weary serenity and moral certitude that was contrary to the more neurotic approaches of other directors on this neglected level of the cinema.
The eight films Anthony Mann made with James Stewart are particularly interesting today for their insights into the uneasy relationships between men and women in a world of violence and action.
--Andrew Sarris, The American Cinema (Dutton, 1968)
There are many Westerns on Turner's schedule in July and I recommend all of those by Ford, Hawks, Walsh, Boetticher, and Mann. My own favorites are Ford's The Searchers, 1956, being shown on July 5; Boetticher's Ride Lonesome, 1959, on July 6; Walsh's They Died with Their Boots On, 1941, July 8; Mann's The Man From Laramie, 1955, July 10; Hawks's Rio Bravo 1959, July 20. Other Westerns I recommend are Sergio Leone's The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, 1968, on July 19 and Sam Peckinpah's moving and funny The Ballad of Cable Hogue, 1970 on July 6, as well as George B. Seitz's elegant tribute to the American Indian, The Vanishing American, 1925, on July 5.
Other movies on Turner in July:
Fritz Lang's fatalistic period piece, Moonfleet, 1955, on July 2
Three intelligent comedies on July 8: The Lady Eve, 1941, and Sullivan's Travels,1942, both by Preston Sturges and Chaplin's Modern Times, 1936
July 9 has James Whale's The Great Garrick, 1937 about 18th C actor David Garrick and on the 10th is Robert Hamer's pessimistic It Always Rains on Sunday, 1949. Also on the 10th is D.W. Griffith's terrific Orphans of the Storm, 1921 and Blake Edwards's corrosive comedy about Hollywood. S.O.B.,1981
On the 13th is Nicholas Ray's modern Western, The Lusty Men, 1952, and on the 15th is Lamont Johnson's One on One, 1977. as well as Mitch Leisen's effective soap opera To Each His Own, 1946.
On the 17th is Preston Sturges's witty The Palm Beach Story, 1942, and on the 18th is Jacques Tourneur's intense film noir, Out of the Past, 1947.
On the 22nd is Walsh's period comedy with James Cagney and Olivia DeHavilland (who turns 100 this year). The Strawberry Blonde, 1941; on the 26th is Buster Keaton's Go West, 1925, and on the 30th is Don Siegel's great crime film The Lineup, 1955
Saturday, June 25, 2016
Steve Jobs, Trumbo, The People v. O.J. Simpson
Three movies about real people and real events --Steve Jobs, written by Aaron Sorkin and directed by Danny Boyle; Trumbo, written by Dave McNamara and directed by Jay Roach; Ryan Murphy's The People v. O.J. Simpson -- indicate how much better, generally, books can handle the complex issues raised by these films.
Dalton Trumbo's letters (M. Evans and Company,1970) and Bruce Cook's biography of Trumbo (Random House, 1970) cast far more light on the issues of the blacklist than Roach's overly simple film version. Trumbo was a fascinating character that Bryan Cranston never effectively illuminates.
Aside from the general creepiness of actors trying to portray real people --Hedda Hopper, John Wayne, Edward G. Robinson -- the only character that's vividly alive is John Goodman as the low-budget producer Frank King for whom Trumbo wrote pseudonymous scripts: when the right-wing Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals threatens King for employing Trumbo he smashes their offices with a baseball bat and tells them to publish whatever they want, since the audience for his films can't read anyway.
Danny Boyle's Steve Jobs is similarly unenlightening about its subject, in spite of a typically witty Aaron Sorkin script. If one knows much about Jobs -- his perfectionism and the fact that he was adopted -- one won't learn much from this film about his successes and failures and his persistence. And if you don't know much about Jobs you won't learn much either: he was nasty to everyone and did not like to share credit. For a more detailed view of Jobs and his ups and downs read Walter Isaacson's biography (Simon and Shuster, 2011).
Jeffrey Toobin's The Run of His Life (Random House,1996), the source for Ryan Murphy's 12-hour TV film about O.J. Simpson, tells us more in one chapter than the whole miniseries does, especially about Simpson's relationship with the Los Angeles police and with the African-American community. It also includes detailed analyses of the trial and all the mistakes the prosecution made, including underestimating how sympathetic Simpson would be -- they were used to sympathetic victims and unsympathetic perpetrators -- and becoming so convinced that Simpson was guilty that they lost sight of the obstacles they had to overcome.
One interesting thing about Jobs, Trumbo and Simpson is that all three were poor parents. Simpson mistreated the mothers of his children brutally, Jobs was better at psychological abuse, while Trumbo generally ignored his children, except to yell at them when they interfered with his work. Obsession with oneself, for whatever reasons, can have an alarming effect on one's children.
Dalton Trumbo's letters (M. Evans and Company,1970) and Bruce Cook's biography of Trumbo (Random House, 1970) cast far more light on the issues of the blacklist than Roach's overly simple film version. Trumbo was a fascinating character that Bryan Cranston never effectively illuminates.
Aside from the general creepiness of actors trying to portray real people --Hedda Hopper, John Wayne, Edward G. Robinson -- the only character that's vividly alive is John Goodman as the low-budget producer Frank King for whom Trumbo wrote pseudonymous scripts: when the right-wing Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals threatens King for employing Trumbo he smashes their offices with a baseball bat and tells them to publish whatever they want, since the audience for his films can't read anyway.
Danny Boyle's Steve Jobs is similarly unenlightening about its subject, in spite of a typically witty Aaron Sorkin script. If one knows much about Jobs -- his perfectionism and the fact that he was adopted -- one won't learn much from this film about his successes and failures and his persistence. And if you don't know much about Jobs you won't learn much either: he was nasty to everyone and did not like to share credit. For a more detailed view of Jobs and his ups and downs read Walter Isaacson's biography (Simon and Shuster, 2011).
Jeffrey Toobin's The Run of His Life (Random House,1996), the source for Ryan Murphy's 12-hour TV film about O.J. Simpson, tells us more in one chapter than the whole miniseries does, especially about Simpson's relationship with the Los Angeles police and with the African-American community. It also includes detailed analyses of the trial and all the mistakes the prosecution made, including underestimating how sympathetic Simpson would be -- they were used to sympathetic victims and unsympathetic perpetrators -- and becoming so convinced that Simpson was guilty that they lost sight of the obstacles they had to overcome.
One interesting thing about Jobs, Trumbo and Simpson is that all three were poor parents. Simpson mistreated the mothers of his children brutally, Jobs was better at psychological abuse, while Trumbo generally ignored his children, except to yell at them when they interfered with his work. Obsession with oneself, for whatever reasons, can have an alarming effect on one's children.
Sunday, June 19, 2016
My Perfect Season, by Mark Edmundson
"My Perfect Season," by Mark Edmundson (Harper's Magazine July 2016), is subtitled "Playing it safe in the Pee Wee League."
I did not swing the bat, and yet I was perfect. I walked every time. I was nine for nine or, as the record books would say, I was zero for zero. A walk does not count in one's average as a time at bat. But to myself I was impeccable, sinless. I never did anything wrong.
--Mark Edmundson
This took place when Mark was seven years old, in 1960 in the Pee Wee League. He doesn't tell us how many runs he scored or what the impact of his walks was. Perhaps he doesn't remember much beyond the important point: he never did anything wrong. This is what it has come to in much of youth organized baseball: fear of striking out, of dropping the ball, of not tagging up when there are less than two outs, etc. When I was seven I played plenty of baseball, but always with other kids in sandlots, no adult coaches required. Our goal was to have fun, so we didn't worry if we did something "wrong," that was part of the game; after all, in the major leagues even the best hitters make outs two-thirds of the time.
I like to win games, but unless I am heavily provoked, I do not like it that someone else has to lose. I feel bad for the losers and sometimes, no doubt, contrive to put myself in the loser's sad space to save them the suffering.
--Mark Edmundson
I think the overall importance of winning has slunk down to the lowest levels of baseball and other games, as we see all kinds of cheating (mainly with performance-enhancing drugs) in professional sports. It seems that playing a game for fun is becoming extinct, as sports have been taken over, even at the lowest levels, by organizations and ego-driven coaches. Edmundson says "for a while I was allowed to be a child," something that is increasingly rare. I never played any organized sport when I was a kid, though I did try out for the Little League when I was 12 and did not find out until years later that since the league was sponsored by the Elks Club only the children of club members were allowed in the league. My father was not a member, nor did he have any interest in baseball. During the summer I spent my time playing baseball and, when we didn't have enough kids for a game, reading. When I went to prep school at fifteen years old I tried out for the baseball team and found I was quite out of my league: the ball was thrown so hard and fast I could hardly see it, much less hit it. I switched to tennis.
In the final game of the season seven-year-old Edmundsome finally takes a swing at the ball, admiring his hit so much he almost forgets to run to first base. It's a story we can take to heart: one always has a chance. As Abraham Lincoln said, "I will study and get ready, and perhaps my chance will come."
I did not swing the bat, and yet I was perfect. I walked every time. I was nine for nine or, as the record books would say, I was zero for zero. A walk does not count in one's average as a time at bat. But to myself I was impeccable, sinless. I never did anything wrong.
--Mark Edmundson
This took place when Mark was seven years old, in 1960 in the Pee Wee League. He doesn't tell us how many runs he scored or what the impact of his walks was. Perhaps he doesn't remember much beyond the important point: he never did anything wrong. This is what it has come to in much of youth organized baseball: fear of striking out, of dropping the ball, of not tagging up when there are less than two outs, etc. When I was seven I played plenty of baseball, but always with other kids in sandlots, no adult coaches required. Our goal was to have fun, so we didn't worry if we did something "wrong," that was part of the game; after all, in the major leagues even the best hitters make outs two-thirds of the time.
I like to win games, but unless I am heavily provoked, I do not like it that someone else has to lose. I feel bad for the losers and sometimes, no doubt, contrive to put myself in the loser's sad space to save them the suffering.
--Mark Edmundson
I think the overall importance of winning has slunk down to the lowest levels of baseball and other games, as we see all kinds of cheating (mainly with performance-enhancing drugs) in professional sports. It seems that playing a game for fun is becoming extinct, as sports have been taken over, even at the lowest levels, by organizations and ego-driven coaches. Edmundson says "for a while I was allowed to be a child," something that is increasingly rare. I never played any organized sport when I was a kid, though I did try out for the Little League when I was 12 and did not find out until years later that since the league was sponsored by the Elks Club only the children of club members were allowed in the league. My father was not a member, nor did he have any interest in baseball. During the summer I spent my time playing baseball and, when we didn't have enough kids for a game, reading. When I went to prep school at fifteen years old I tried out for the baseball team and found I was quite out of my league: the ball was thrown so hard and fast I could hardly see it, much less hit it. I switched to tennis.
In the final game of the season seven-year-old Edmundsome finally takes a swing at the ball, admiring his hit so much he almost forgets to run to first base. It's a story we can take to heart: one always has a chance. As Abraham Lincoln said, "I will study and get ready, and perhaps my chance will come."
Friday, June 17, 2016
Warner Brothers' Sweet Music 1935
Sweet Music, directed by Alfred E. Green for Warner Brothers in 1935, is a relatively uninspired musical comedy, though the music is more inspired than the comedy, which consists of seltzer bottles squirted and violins broken over heads. Rudy Vallee leads his band and sings a number of nice songs, mostly by Harry Warren and Al Dubin, and Ann Dvorak does some dancing. Warner Brothers was still stuck on Busby Berkeley routines of overhead shots -- parodied in Sweet Music by men in drag, choreographed by Bobby Connolly -- and teen heartthrob Vallee was not a dancer and Ann Dvorak was a clunky one. The Warner Brothers musical was about to fall out of favor, replaced by the more subtle and elegant musicals of Rogers and Astaire for RKO; the year Sweet Music came out there was also the Rogers and Astaire Top Hat, with music by Irving Berlin and a much bigger budget than Warner Brothers ever spent on a musical. Of course the Astaire/Rogers musical was gradually replaced by the Technicolor musicals of MGM, produced by Arthur Freed and often directed by Vincente Minnelli, the only major American director to make musicals.
Rudy Vallee's voice gradually changed from tenor to baritone and he fell out of favor (though his radio show ran until 1955), only to be rediscovered by Preston Sturges, who used Vallee's deadpan speaking style to great comic effect in several movies, especially The Palm Beach Story (1942) where he is singing "Goodnight Sweetheart" outside Claudette Colbert's window, unaware that inside she is canoodling with Joel McCrea. Ann Dvorak had a major role in Howard Hawks's Scarface (1932) but often fought with studio heads and spent most of her career in B films. When she did get a good role, as in Albert Lewin's The Private Affairs of Bel Ami (1947), she would make the most of it.
Rudy Vallee's voice gradually changed from tenor to baritone and he fell out of favor (though his radio show ran until 1955), only to be rediscovered by Preston Sturges, who used Vallee's deadpan speaking style to great comic effect in several movies, especially The Palm Beach Story (1942) where he is singing "Goodnight Sweetheart" outside Claudette Colbert's window, unaware that inside she is canoodling with Joel McCrea. Ann Dvorak had a major role in Howard Hawks's Scarface (1932) but often fought with studio heads and spent most of her career in B films. When she did get a good role, as in Albert Lewin's The Private Affairs of Bel Ami (1947), she would make the most of it.
Thursday, June 16, 2016
Anthony Trollope's Christmas at Thompson Hall
She dropped the beard very softly -- and there on the pillow before her lay the face of a stranger. She had put the mustard plaster on the wrong man.
--Anthony Trollope, Christmas at Thompson Hall (Penguin, 2014)
Trollope's story was originally published in The Graphic, Christmas Number, 1876. I don't always think of Trollope as particularly funny, though he is often droll in a serious way, but in this story his droll observations are accurate but structured in a particular manner to make them extraordinarily amusing. Mr. and Mrs. Brown are in Paris on a very cold night in Dec. and Mr. Brown is balking at getting home to Thompson Hall in time for Christmas. "She had perceived that as her husband became really ill he also became more tractable and less disputatious." As they go to bed he insists that she find a jar of mustard and apply it to his throat so he can get some relief. She has some amusing misadventures as she searches through the dark hotel for the mustard and then, after applying it, realizes it is the wrong man:
Not Priam wakened in the dead of night, nor Dido when first she learned that Aeneas had fled, not Othello when he learned that Desdemona had been chaste, not Medea when she became conscious of her slaughtered children, could have been more struck with horror than was this British matron as she stood for a moment gazing with awe on that stranger's bed.
The Browns' room was 333 and she had entered 353: Remarking to herself, with a Briton's natural criticism of things French, that those horrid foreigners do not know how to make their figures, she rushes back to her room. She tells her husband she lost her way:
"Where have you been all night?" he half whispered, half croaked, with an agonizing effort.
"I have been looking for the mustard."
"Have been looking all night and haven't found it? Where have you been?'"
But she can't tell her husband what happened. After all, she had been in another man's bedroom. They must fly as early as possible from the vengeance of the man she injured.
But she was caught and reported before they could leave; her name was on the handkerchief she had used. After much arguing and threats to call the police and complaining by the victim, Mr. Jones -- "It seems to be deuced like a practical joke" -- they all reconcile, up to a point, and leave the hotel. They all end up on an omnibus, a boat and a train uneasily together, all three eventually arriving at Thompson Hall on Christmas. Mr. Jones, it turns out, is to marry Mrs. Brown's sister, to whom Mrs. Brown confesses everything. A member of Parliament, present at the Christmas festivities, sums it up by saying, "you should never go to bed in a strange house without locking your door."
--Anthony Trollope, Christmas at Thompson Hall (Penguin, 2014)
Trollope's story was originally published in The Graphic, Christmas Number, 1876. I don't always think of Trollope as particularly funny, though he is often droll in a serious way, but in this story his droll observations are accurate but structured in a particular manner to make them extraordinarily amusing. Mr. and Mrs. Brown are in Paris on a very cold night in Dec. and Mr. Brown is balking at getting home to Thompson Hall in time for Christmas. "She had perceived that as her husband became really ill he also became more tractable and less disputatious." As they go to bed he insists that she find a jar of mustard and apply it to his throat so he can get some relief. She has some amusing misadventures as she searches through the dark hotel for the mustard and then, after applying it, realizes it is the wrong man:
Not Priam wakened in the dead of night, nor Dido when first she learned that Aeneas had fled, not Othello when he learned that Desdemona had been chaste, not Medea when she became conscious of her slaughtered children, could have been more struck with horror than was this British matron as she stood for a moment gazing with awe on that stranger's bed.
The Browns' room was 333 and she had entered 353: Remarking to herself, with a Briton's natural criticism of things French, that those horrid foreigners do not know how to make their figures, she rushes back to her room. She tells her husband she lost her way:
"Where have you been all night?" he half whispered, half croaked, with an agonizing effort.
"I have been looking for the mustard."
"Have been looking all night and haven't found it? Where have you been?'"
But she can't tell her husband what happened. After all, she had been in another man's bedroom. They must fly as early as possible from the vengeance of the man she injured.
But she was caught and reported before they could leave; her name was on the handkerchief she had used. After much arguing and threats to call the police and complaining by the victim, Mr. Jones -- "It seems to be deuced like a practical joke" -- they all reconcile, up to a point, and leave the hotel. They all end up on an omnibus, a boat and a train uneasily together, all three eventually arriving at Thompson Hall on Christmas. Mr. Jones, it turns out, is to marry Mrs. Brown's sister, to whom Mrs. Brown confesses everything. A member of Parliament, present at the Christmas festivities, sums it up by saying, "you should never go to bed in a strange house without locking your door."
Wednesday, June 8, 2016
La Nuit du Carrefour: Simenon's Novel and Renoir's Film
"Jojo the mechanic's mistake, when he saw me suddenly turn up and, fearing I might discover everything, sent a driver away with a spare wheel full of diamonds that was too small for the lorry."
--Inspector Maigret in Georges Simenon's La Nuit du Carrefour (Penguin, 1931), translated by Linda Coverdale.
It is unusual for a good movie to be made from a good book, but this happened when Jean Renoir made La Nuit du Carrefour in 1932. What Renoir was able to do was make visual Simenon's limited descriptions and give behavioral characteristics to Simenon's characters. While doing this Renoir also heightened the class-consciousness already in Simenon's novel. The character of Maigret reminds me of Ross MacDonald's Lew Archer in the way we learn much about both characters from their dialogue, with little description necessary. (MacDonald even used some elements of La Nuit du Carrefour in his novel The Chill,1963). Maigret solves things by observation and interrogation rather than by the ratiocination of Holmes or Poirot.
The crossroads where the movie and book take place is small and not too far outside of Paris. It is a place where Frenchmen are prone to suggest that all foreigners should be deported, where Jews are not particularly wanted, where the memory of the the Great War is still intense and where women are expected to behave properly. There are only three houses -- none of them particularly nice -- and it rains constantly. Renoir shot his film mostly at night and there is a beautiful car chase illuminated only by the headlights of the pursuing car. The movie is almost as confusing in its plot as Howard Hawks's The Big Sleep (1946); it turns out that almost everyone who lives or works at the crossroads is guilty of something, as Maigret proves that the country is as corrupt as the city and Renoir proves to be as good a visual stylist as Simenon is a verbal one.
--Inspector Maigret in Georges Simenon's La Nuit du Carrefour (Penguin, 1931), translated by Linda Coverdale.
It is unusual for a good movie to be made from a good book, but this happened when Jean Renoir made La Nuit du Carrefour in 1932. What Renoir was able to do was make visual Simenon's limited descriptions and give behavioral characteristics to Simenon's characters. While doing this Renoir also heightened the class-consciousness already in Simenon's novel. The character of Maigret reminds me of Ross MacDonald's Lew Archer in the way we learn much about both characters from their dialogue, with little description necessary. (MacDonald even used some elements of La Nuit du Carrefour in his novel The Chill,1963). Maigret solves things by observation and interrogation rather than by the ratiocination of Holmes or Poirot.
The crossroads where the movie and book take place is small and not too far outside of Paris. It is a place where Frenchmen are prone to suggest that all foreigners should be deported, where Jews are not particularly wanted, where the memory of the the Great War is still intense and where women are expected to behave properly. There are only three houses -- none of them particularly nice -- and it rains constantly. Renoir shot his film mostly at night and there is a beautiful car chase illuminated only by the headlights of the pursuing car. The movie is almost as confusing in its plot as Howard Hawks's The Big Sleep (1946); it turns out that almost everyone who lives or works at the crossroads is guilty of something, as Maigret proves that the country is as corrupt as the city and Renoir proves to be as good a visual stylist as Simenon is a verbal one.
Tuesday, June 7, 2016
The Vanishing Velazquez by Laura Cumming.
If only there was a photograph of Snare's portrait, we could see whether it carried something of Velazquez, or nothing at all. It would allow us to see what he saw, what he revered, above all what he truly loved -- I believe in his sincerity -- in this work of art that wrecked his life.
If the art of Velazquez teaches us anything at all it is the depth and complexity of our fellow human beings.
-- Laura Cumming, The Vanishing Velazquez (Scribner,2016)
In 1845 bookseller John Snare of Reading,England bought a portrait at a liquidation auction that he was convinced, after he cleaned it, was a portrait of Charles I by the Spanish painter Diego Velasquez. Snare paid eight pounds for the painting and spent the rest of his life proving that it was indeed a Velazquez and showing it everywhere from England to America.
The painting was last seen when Snare tried to sell it in America in 1898; no one knows now if it still exists or, if it does, where it is; there is no surviving photograph or any other picture of the painting. Those of us who have been to the Prado and seen Velazquez's paintings -- especially the exquisite Las Meninas,c.1656 -- can understand how a painting of Velazquez's can ensnare (pun intended) one, if Snare's painting was indeed a Velazquez.
Cumming's book is a slightly uneasy mixture of detective story -- as she follows in Snare's footsteps in his attempts to authenticate the painting and uses the resources of the internet to try to trace it -- and art historical connoisseurship, as she captures much of the appeal of Velazquez's paintings. Whether of not one agrees with her interpretations I urge one to travel to Madrid to see Las Meninas or at least to the Metropolitan Museum to see the extraordinary portrait of Juan de Pareja, c. 1650
Quartet, a movie, and Four Stories by W. Somerset Maugham
"I am a Jew and you know it. I don't want to be English."
--George Bland in Maugham's story The Alien Corn
"There are three things I especially want to warn you against: don't gamble, don't lend anyone money, and don't have anything to do with women."
--Henry Garnet to his son Nicky in Maugham's story The Facts of Life.
"I like it and if you don't like it you can lump it."
--Herbert Sunbury to his wife Betty in Maugham's story The Kite.
"I don't deny that I've had a bit of fun now and then. A man wants it Women are different."
--George Peregrine in Maugham's story The Colonel's Lady
There doesn't seem to be much middlebrow culture around now, though others disagree (are Downton Abbey and Breaking Bad middlebrow? The latter, at least, is not comforting the way middlebrow culture is alleged to be). Somerset Maugham was once considered middlebrow but I think of his writing as highbrow, in the sense that it is challenging, intelligent and demanding. I would say, however, that many of the movies made from his films are middlebrow because they add unnecessary clarity to what often remains unresolved. In the film Quartet, 1948, for instance, the stories used have changed endings: The Alien Corn (directed by Harold French) has an added ending where George Bland's suicide is considered by a coroner's jury to be an accident, since no man would kill himself because he couldn't be a pianist; The Kite (directed by Arthur Crabtree) has an ending added with the unhappy couple reconciling by flying kites together; and The Colonel's Lady has an added ending where Evie says that man she was writing about was her husband, before he changed into a Colonel Blimp. The Facts of Life is less changed than the other stories, though Nicky and his woman friend do not sleep together. Maugham's essential irony is missing in these filmed versions of his stories.
Maugham himself makes a charming appearance at the beginning of the film -- "when I was in my twenties the critics said I was brutal, in my thirties I was flippant, in my forties cynical, in my fifties competent, in my sixties superficial" -- so he may or may not have had a say in R. C. Sherriff's screenplays or he might have just been willing to take the money and let Gainsborough Pictures do what they thought necessary for commercial success, i.e. dumb down the stories a bit, though they did use talented actors. It remains a mystery, however, why they used four different directors who had such similar styles. Still, even with the changed endings the film did show some of Maugham's effective satire of the British class system. Why would one want to see these stories filmed? To attract a larger audience to them, as Masterpiece Theatre allegedly increases the readership of Trollope and Dickens? Or simple curiosity, to see them as others perhaps see them?
--George Bland in Maugham's story The Alien Corn
"There are three things I especially want to warn you against: don't gamble, don't lend anyone money, and don't have anything to do with women."
--Henry Garnet to his son Nicky in Maugham's story The Facts of Life.
"I like it and if you don't like it you can lump it."
--Herbert Sunbury to his wife Betty in Maugham's story The Kite.
"I don't deny that I've had a bit of fun now and then. A man wants it Women are different."
--George Peregrine in Maugham's story The Colonel's Lady
There doesn't seem to be much middlebrow culture around now, though others disagree (are Downton Abbey and Breaking Bad middlebrow? The latter, at least, is not comforting the way middlebrow culture is alleged to be). Somerset Maugham was once considered middlebrow but I think of his writing as highbrow, in the sense that it is challenging, intelligent and demanding. I would say, however, that many of the movies made from his films are middlebrow because they add unnecessary clarity to what often remains unresolved. In the film Quartet, 1948, for instance, the stories used have changed endings: The Alien Corn (directed by Harold French) has an added ending where George Bland's suicide is considered by a coroner's jury to be an accident, since no man would kill himself because he couldn't be a pianist; The Kite (directed by Arthur Crabtree) has an ending added with the unhappy couple reconciling by flying kites together; and The Colonel's Lady has an added ending where Evie says that man she was writing about was her husband, before he changed into a Colonel Blimp. The Facts of Life is less changed than the other stories, though Nicky and his woman friend do not sleep together. Maugham's essential irony is missing in these filmed versions of his stories.
Maugham himself makes a charming appearance at the beginning of the film -- "when I was in my twenties the critics said I was brutal, in my thirties I was flippant, in my forties cynical, in my fifties competent, in my sixties superficial" -- so he may or may not have had a say in R. C. Sherriff's screenplays or he might have just been willing to take the money and let Gainsborough Pictures do what they thought necessary for commercial success, i.e. dumb down the stories a bit, though they did use talented actors. It remains a mystery, however, why they used four different directors who had such similar styles. Still, even with the changed endings the film did show some of Maugham's effective satire of the British class system. Why would one want to see these stories filmed? To attract a larger audience to them, as Masterpiece Theatre allegedly increases the readership of Trollope and Dickens? Or simple curiosity, to see them as others perhaps see them?
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