Enitharmon’s Cave

It’s enough to give the film distributors apoplexy. A whole half hour? With no dialogue? No background music? No bangs? Boooooooring! But there is music and drama in silence, and for all that three-quarters of Rififi is full of rich and fruity dialogue, noir dialogue and a fine score by Georges Auric, it’s that 32 minutes that the film is known for. But it shouldn’t be supposed that the rest isn’t damned good too.

Rififi isn’t the first heist film - that would surely be Edwin Porter’s The Great Train Robbery of 1903 - but it’s the one that defined the genre for modern audiences. It’s also, I would argue, the best. Not only because of its originality, but because the whole thing, made on a shoestring with unknown actors and beautifully shot in a rainy, cold Paris with the grainy intensity of a Cartier-Bresson photograph. But it’s not only, or even mainly, about the daring robbery of a high-class jewellers; it’s about the way greed and jealousy can poison even the best-laid schemes. In this it resembles The Treasure of the Sierra Madre and if you have read my piece on that, you’ll see that I have compared that to Macbeth. Certainly the goes back a lot further than that, no doubt to Euripides and I dare say somebody who has studied Greek tragedy will confirm that.

In the original novel, the central underworld characters were Algerian, and that was as incendiary a notion in 1955 as it would be today. Perhaps it took the American Dassin to make them true Frenchmen!

Did I mention that, owing to absences, I’ve been in the bowls team again a couple of times lately? Not with conspicuous success, mind. I’m in dire need of some practice.

Tonight I went out to Roose, to the Roose Conservative Working Men’s Club, to be precise (but that sounds a bit like the Turkeys’ Christmas Club to me) with a view to give support, mark cards and measure, but discovered on arrival that I was in the team. And I hadn’t got my woods with me.

I lost 21-9. I put this down to playing on a strange green (one with a hump like a dromedary, and which slowed down dramatically as the evening wore on) without a roll-up, and using somebody else’s woods. To blame the presence of evil in the shape of the Conservative Party would be to over-egg the pudding!

I have my bowling team colours now. Somebody, of course, has to give it the once over and text it for sleepability.

I posted this, which follows on from a conversation I had with somebody I knew that I met by
chance in the market yesterday, and which set me thinking about things, in the Quaker mailing list I subscribe to. I wondered what a more general readership might make of it.

Let’s invent a hypothetical character. Let’s, strictly for the sake of
clarity, lay the stereotyping on thick and call him Wesley. Wesley has moved
to a new town. Being bright and articulate and enjoying the company of
others, he seeks out gatherings of people of similar mindset and interests in
order to expand his social connections and make new friends.

In one particular group, Wesley notices, because he’s a sensitive sort of chap
who can read these things, that people are being stand-offish with him. This
group is in a situation where people necessarily have to interact with each
other, and his keen sense of awareness tells him that while some of the
people are very welcoming, others who probably constitute a majority interact
with no more than they have to; they mumble, fail to make eye contact,
communicate with him through a third party, and generally try to avoid his
company. Wesley might well say, stuff this lot, I’ll go somewhere else. But
he likes those who are welcoming, and he has a certain stubborn pride that
won’t let him be driven out by the boorish behaviour of others. Time passes,
and Wesley finds himself somewhat more accepted although a few remain
sullenly hostile. He remarks on this to a member of the group that he
casually meets one Saturday morning, and the member comments that “when you
first came, nobody knew what to do with you.”

I think we can all be clear about what’s going on here. But change the
parameters a little; suppose that it’s not Wesley we are dealing with here.
Suppose instead that it’s a white, middle-aged woman with some kind of
non-debilitating disability or disfigurement; a congenital hormonal
dysfunction, perhaps. And she has exactly the same experience as Wesley.
The question is, does the change of parameters change the situation to
something quite different? Is the behaviour of members of the group more, or
less, acceptable? Or the same? Why? Does it matter?

Yes, that Charles Laughton: Yorkshireman, legendary character actor (where are all the character actors today, huh?) and consummate man of the stage. And, for one night only, film director.

Cast Robert Mitchum as a con artist who poses as a preacher to part gullible widows from their inheritance and you have a bit of a cliché. Put him on the trail of the widow and children one-time cellmate, hanged for his part in an armed robbery gone bad, and you have a recipe for a classic slice of film noir. Buit anybody looking here for gritty realism and suspense is going to be disappointed. Everything is just too over-the-top to be credible in that context.

But look at it from another angle; as a fairy-tale, the kind of dark, nightmarish fairy-tale that the Grimm brothers harvested from the forests of Hessen; then you find yourself looking at a little bit of genius. It all makes sense then. Mitchum pulls off the pantomime baddie with all the sinister charm that you could wish for. Lillian Gish gives a peach of a performance as a feisty fairy godmother: terrifying but golden-hearted. The children recall Hansel and Gretel, lost in flight from danger. That boat carrying the children down the Ohio River, watched over by the animals under a huge crescent moon, reeks of allegory; a journey from tarnished innocence into the wisdom of experience (paralleled by Miss Cooper’s teenaged ward, Ruby, in her early sexual encounters). Naturally, it all brings to mind Huckleberry Finn; Siegfried’s journey down the Rhine; even Watership Down. (And yes, The Lord of the Rings if you must.)

Looked at in the right way, this film is a little gem that deserves to be better-known than it is. It’s such a shame that Charles Laughton never had a chance to weave such magic again.

Say “happy birthday” to Tosca, who is four years old today!

The doc assured me - after a urine test - that I don’t have kidney problems and I’m not diabetic. I do, however, have an infection of the urinary tract (and it does seem a bit counterintuitive to me that this should cause aching in my lower back but I guess that’s where the tubes from the kidneys go). So I’m on antibiotics and instructions to take it easy.

Don’t know whether to be relieved or disappointed!

I feel like shit. It’s been on an off like this since I had my bad turn a couple of weeks ago, never actually feeling really ill in that way again, but on and off I’ve been feeling nauseous, and with not exactly a pain but a dull ache that seems to be rooted in the small of my back. Which suggests kidneys to me. Maybe kidney stones, I don’t know. I’ve been out of sorts for a few days now, and the ache gets steadily worse. Last night I couldn’t get comfortable and slept only fitfully. This morning I couldn’t bring myself to go for a run (not entirely because it’s been pissing down all morning.)

Anyway, I’ve arranged to see the doc this afternoon and maybe I’ll learn more. I can’t really believe it’s anything serious but one should be prepared, I think.

The only thing that could cheer me up right now is if I could give my Roger a big compensatory hug. And one or two other things. Fancy losing to that vacuous pretty-boy. You’re my champion, Roger!

As I walked into town this morning I saw a sight that made my heart leap for joy even in the rain. A red flag flying proudly over Barrow Town Hall! Could it really be? David Cameron under house arrest? Blood running in the leafy avenues of Hawcoat as the residents are dragged through the streets to be cast into teh quarry? Jack Richardson shackled to the piers of Walney Bridge to await the passage of three high tides? All marketing people rounded up and pressed into useful labour commensurate with their intellectual ability (like scraping the chewing gum off the pavement)?

Alas, it was not to be. The scarlet banner turns out, on closer inspection, to be the triskalion flag of the Isle of Man. I expect babooshka might tell us what this is all about, if we ask her nicely.