C01   1 **[072 TEXT C01**]
C01   2 *<*5Television*>
C01   3 *<*2LIFE OF MISS NIGHTINGALE*>
C01   4 *<SKILFUL PICTURE*>
C01   5    |^*0The {0*2BBC*0}'s dramatised documentary on Florence
C01   6 Nightingale last night cleverly managed to suggest the person behind
C01   7 the legend.
C01   8    |^While never minimising the immensity of her work, it lifted the
C01   9 saintly halo which usually surrounds her name to reveal a warm,
C01  10 dedicated person who accomplished most by perseverance and hard work.
C01  11    |^Most stories of Miss Nightingale begin and end with her work in
C01  12 the Crimea. ^This one started from that point and devoted itself to
C01  13 her lifelong campaign to improve nursing in this country. ^The
C01  14 documentary managed to show the obstacles and her devotion.
C01  15    |^Moira Fraser's Miss Nightingale was a mixture of the dramatic and
C01  16 the sincere. ^Demure one moment, hard and decisive the next, she
C01  17 caught the dual sides of a complex character. ^The production by Bill
C01  18 Duncalf compressed a long and sometimes rambling story into a
C01  19 concentrated comprehensive survey of a life work.
C01  20    |^{0P. J. K.}
C01  21 *<*6FINE SINGING IN HENZE OPERA*>
C01  22 *<*2GLYNDEBOURNE *"CONTEMPORARY**"*>
C01  23 *<*0From *6MARTIN COOPER*>
C01  24 *<*2GLYNDEBOURNE, *0Thursday.*>
C01  25    |^*4H*2ANS WERNER HENZE'S *0*"Elegy for Young Lovers**" is the
C01  26 first unambiguously *"contemporary**" work to be admitted to the
C01  27 Glyndebourne canon.
C01  28    |^By no means a masterpiece, it is in many respects a
C01  29 representative modern work and the composer is a highly skilled
C01  30 manipulator of contemporary idioms, with a strong sense of words and
C01  31 situation.
C01  32    |^The libretto, by {0W. H.} Auden and Chester Kallman, is largely
C01  33 a satire on the petty court surrounding an ageing poet, whose deeply
C01  34 egocentric character leads him to sacrifice everything to his need of
C01  35 inspiration.
C01  36    |^Henze obtains his musical characterisation by means of individual
C01  37 instrumental timbres and *"personal**" intervals, and the result is
C01  38 often less delineation of character than caricature. ^This is also the
C01  39 chief, or at least the most successfully executed trait of the
C01  40 libretto, which contains an odd blend of highly poetic phraseology and
C01  41 schoolboy humour.
C01  42 *<*6MELODY LACKING*>
C01  43    |^*0The composer has a happy gift for musical dialogue as well as
C01  44 for the grotesque, but he is less successful in extended \6*1arioso
C01  45 *0passages. ^The more serious scenes of the opera were in fact often
C01  46 uninteresting owing to the absence of any memorable melodic invention,
C01  47 but an exception was the Poet's moment of self-revelation in Act *=2,
C01  48 which was excellently sung by Carlos Alexander.
C01  49    |^The lovers, whose chief scene was cut at the last moment, had
C01  50 comparatively little to sing, but Elisabeth So"derstro"m gave an
C01  51 exquisitely touching performance and Andre*?2 Turp's ringing voice
C01  52 contrasted well with the character-singing demanded of most of the
C01  53 cast.
C01  54    |^This was in every case excellent. ^Dorothy Dorow's visionary old
C01  55 madwoman had considerable musical pathos, and Kerstin Meyer struck
C01  56 exactly the right note of hysterical devotion as the Poet's spinster
C01  57 secretary.
C01  58 *<*6TOO ENTHUSIASTICALLY*>
C01  59    |^*0Thomas Hemsley's performance as the Poet's private doctor was
C01  60 dramatically shrewd and musically well conceived.
C01  61    |^The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra under John Pritchard handled
C01  62 Henze's chamber music style rather too enthusiastically at first, so
C01  63 that the singer's words were largely obscured, and the composer's very
C01  64 free use of the percussion made this a difficulty throughout.
C01  65    |^Gu"nther Rennert's imaginative production cleverly conveyed the
C01  66 crazy, precarious atmosphere of the Alpine inn inhabited by the Poet's
C01  67 court, and his lighting of the later scenes suggested the ultimate
C01  68 isolation in which the Poet finds himself.
C01  69 *<*6A FASTIDIOUS COMPOSER*>
C01  70 *<*2*'JOURNAL**' DEBUT AT CHELTENHAM*>
C01  71 *<*4From *6DONALD MITCHELL*>
C01  72 *<*2CHELTENHAM, *0Thursday.*>
C01  73    |^*4I*2T *0was not long ago that Richard Rodney Bennett composed a
C01  74 *"Calendar**" for chamber ensemble. ^Now he has written a *"Journal**"
C01  75 for orchestra which was given its first performance in the Town Hall,
C01  76 Cheltenham, to-night by the {0*2B.B.C.} *0Symphony Orchestra
C01  77 conducted by Norman Del Mar.
C01  78    |^This new work, cast in five short sections, confirms that \0Mr.
C01  79 Bennett is one of the most musical of our younger composers.
C01  80    |^He writes, one might say, extremely musical music, of which the
C01  81 sound is fastidiously calculated and yet agreeably spontaneous and
C01  82 imaginative.
C01  83    |^He does not in this *"Journal**" write one note too many. ^One
C01  84 wonders, rather, whether he has not written too few. ^Or, to state
C01  85 one's doubt more plainly, one wonders whether the invention in this
C01  86 new work is not a little wanting in substance.
C01  87 *<*6SLENDER IDEAS*>
C01  88    |^*0Brief ideas are welcome indeed if they compress a sizeable
C01  89 thought. ^It struck me that \0Mr. Bennett's ideas in this piece were
C01  90 not so much succinct as slender.
C01  91    |^Perhaps it was for this reason that the work seemed somewhat pale
C01  92 in character, a criticism that certainly cannot be made of Berg's very
C01  93 rarely heard Three Orchestral Pieces, \0Op. 6 each bar of which, even
C01  94 the most derivative, is impregnated with the composer's personality.
C01  95    |^The cruel acoustics of the hall played havoc with textures which
C01  96 are unusually hectic and congested, but \0Mr. Del Mar's heroic labours
C01  97 conveyed a clear impression of the succession of catastrophes which
C01  98 seems to be the work's natural mode of expression.
C01  99    |^There is undeniably something grand about the way Berg throws so
C01 100 many broken eggs into one basket. ^But one is not entirely convinced
C01 101 that a relaxation of tension might not have secured a more balanced
C01 102 and varied work of art.
C01 103 *<*7ANGLO-CHINESE PICARESQUE*>
C01 104 *<*5By *7ROLLA ROUSE*>
C01 105 *<*5The Chinese Bigamy of \0Mr. David Winterlea: a Manchu-Edwardian
C01 106 Fantasy. *4Translated from the Chinese by Henry McAleavy. (Allen &
C01 107 Unwin. 21\0s.)*>
C01 108    |^T*2HE *0basis of *4*"The Chinese Bigamy *0of *4\0Mr. David
C01 109 Winterlea,**" *0explains Henry McAleavy, was found among the
C01 110 single-sheet *"mosquito-newspapers,**" full of *"an assortment of
C01 111 anecdotes, topical items, and serial stories,**" started in about 1870
C01 112 by Wang T'ao, assistant to the famous sinologue \0Dr. Legge.
C01 113    |^\0Mr. McAleavy's version of this *"Manchu-Edwardian fantasy**"
C01 114 is, however, so free that to anybody who knows China and the Chinese
C01 115 nothing of a Chinese flavour remains. ^What the various characters say
C01 116 and do often seems utterly alien to China.
C01 117    |^For example, we are shown a Chinese host placing his principal
C01 118 guest from the Foreign Office in the lowest seat at dinner, accusing
C01 119 him of being homosexual, and generally behaving as no educated Chinese
C01 120 ever could behave. ^Again, the Chinese, whether drunk or sober, never
C01 121 kiss in public, and least of all would a Chinese monk meeting an
C01 122 Englishman for the first time kiss him.
C01 123    |^The period covered by the tale runs from about 1850 to 1913: and
C01 124 all the characters have one thing in common, their coarse behaviour
C01 125 and abnormal appetites. ^While there is a story meandering through the
C01 126 book, the main object of many chapters is to record some improbable
C01 127 and unpleasant anecdote.
C01 128 *<*5\Amahs into Ladies*>
C01 129    |^*0The hero, if such \0Mr. David Winterlea can be called, tries to
C01 130 turn two Cantonese sisters from *1\amahs *0into ladies and teach them
C01 131 English: and they on their side plan to marry him jointly and finally
C01 132 to reside, not in unfashionable Kowloon, but in snobbish Hongkong,
C01 133 where he *"would have a position to keep up.**"
C01 134    |^The main incidents occur on a country estate near London, owned
C01 135 by the Chinese Legation and used by the staff, Chinese and foreign, to
C01 136 amuse themselves, mainly at night.
C01 137 *<*6BYRON'S VEXED REPUTE*>
C01 138 *<*0By *2MARGARET LANE*>
C01 139 *<*5The Late Lord Byron. *4By Doris Langley Moore. (Murray. 2\0gns.)*>
C01 140    |^N*2EVER *0has a greater coil been made about any man than about
C01 141 Byron. ^He sowed passions, jealousies, loyalties, scandals,
C01 142 animosities and treacheries as effortlessly as some far worthier
C01 143 characters scatter boredom.
C01 144    |^The tumult is by no means over, and this being a biographical age
C01 145 and Byron a magnificent documenter of his own life, he has reached the
C01 146 stage (I cannot remember any other great literary figure doing so)
C01 147 when a monumental work can be written on the dramas that seethed and
C01 148 simmered *1after *0his death, taking off from the point at which the
C01 149 reader is accustomed to close a poet's biography.
C01 150    |^Is it really worth while*- one is bound to ask the question
C01 151 sooner or later*- to devote years of research and over 500 closely
C01 152 printed pages to disentangling the labyrinthine quarrels, blackmails,
C01 153 machinations and correspondences which raged for so many years over
C01 154 Byron's grave? ^The answer is, on one condition, that it is; the
C01 155 condition being that one should have an appetite for detail and for
C01 156 knowing as much as possible about one of the most dynamic geniuses who
C01 157 ever lived.
C01 158 *<*4Leisured Mischief-Makers*>
C01 159    |^*0The evil that Byron did certainly lived after him, and was even
C01 160 outmatched by the mischief perpetrated by almost every person who had
C01 161 been close to him. ^In turning over the bones Doris Langley Moore has
C01 162 brought to light a great deal of discreditable behaviour and a vision
C01 163 of mischief-making propensities of the leisured classes in the early
C01 164 19th century which leaves one a little breathless.
C01 165    |^No previous Byron biographer, I fancy (and they have been many)
C01 166 has had access at the same time to so many important manuscript
C01 167 sources. ^The late Lady Wentworth, Byron's great-granddaughter, opened
C01 168 the whole of the Lovelace Papers to \0Mrs. Moore in 1957; she was able
C01 169 to continue her work on them for more than a year after Lady
C01 170 Wentworth's death.
C01 171    |^These papers, the contents of several trunks, are the accumulated
C01 172 letters and personal documents left by Lady Byron, who never recovered
C01 173 from the shock of her brief marriage with the poet, and dedicated the
C01 174 rest of her life (she was 23 when they parted) to self-justification
C01 175 and resentment.
C01 176    |^Would that Byron's Memoirs had also survived! ^How the ghost of
C01 177 the first John Murray must moan in his Albemarle Street vaults to
C01 178 think how self-righteously, urged and abetted by Byron's lifelong
C01 179 friend, John Cam Hobhouse, he burned them there in the fireplace,
C01 180 condemning the work unread, as Tom Moore said, *"and without opening
C01 181 it, as if it were a pest bag!**"
C01 182    |^Byron's marriage, the reasons (real enough though embroidered
C01 183 later) for Lady Byron's leaving him, the scandal of his love affair
C01 184 with his half-sister, Augusta Leigh, the question of the paternity of
C01 185 Medora Leigh her daughter, the long inquisitorial persecution of
C01 186 Augusta by Lady Byron (who seems to have been as neurotic as the most
C01 187 ghoulish novelist could wish), the patient ferreting for evidence to
C01 188 add homosexuality to incest as an extra nail in his coffin, the
C01 189 unspeakable treacheries of Lady Caroline Lamb, the scarcely less
C01 190 heinous treacheries of Augusta*- it is the Lovelace Papers, surely,
C01 191 that deserve to be called a *"pest bag**", not Byron's consumed
C01 192 Memoirs, which at least would have possessed the merit of being well
C01 193 and entertainingly written.
C01 194    |^Equally important have been the Hobhouse Journals, a vast mass of
C01 195 material partly in the British Museum, partly in the possession of the
C01 196 Hobhouse family in Somerset. ^Hobhouse, later Lord Broughton, was
C01 197 Byron's intimate (if a little stuffy and unimaginative) friend from
C01 198 their Cambridge days, who had travelled widely with him, been
C01 199 fascinated by him to a point that looks like love, had fanned the
C01 200 enthusiasm which had sent Byron finally to Greece, and suffered years
C01 201 of loyal exasperation as Byron's executor.
C01 202 *<*4Sturdy Friends*>
C01 203    |^*0Byron as a man is seen at his best in relation to such sturdy
C01 204 male friends. ^He brought out the worst in women, as they certainly
C01 205 brought it out in him. ^There is scarcely a woman in his life besides
C01 206 Teresa Guiccioli, last and most reasonable love, who does not affect
C01 207 the modern reader with nausea.
C01 208    |^The Countess Guiccioli was by birth a Gamba; her brother Pietro
C01 209 accompanied Byron to Greece, shared the misery and ruinous
C01 210 frustrations of the campaign, and was with him when he died. ^The
C01 211 Gamba Papers in Ravenna have shed some valuable light on this last
C01 212 phase, wholesomely contradicting the lies of that strangely theatrical
C01 213 blackguard, Edward Trelawney, who played a highly discreditable part
C01 214 in the Greek campaign himself, and wished, as did many others, to make
C01 215 capital out of his association with Byron.
C01 216 *<*4A Modern Voice*>
C01 217    |^*0Few people come out of this detailed {6post-mortem} with much
C01 218 credit. ^Hobhouse certainly, though one respects him more than one
C01 219 likes him, Byron himself, who, whenever his voice is heard above the
C01 220 banshee wail (Augusta, Caroline Lamb, Lady Byron keeping in chorus)
C01 221 surprises one by his tone of humanity, of common sense, of candour: a
C01 222 startlingly modern voice. ^Lady Byron *1most *0dislikeable, Augusta a
C01 223 shifty fool and not altogether a nice one, Lady Caroline Lamb a bitch
C01 224 goddess in an age which (thanks to plentiful domestic service and
C01 225 gracious living) was notably rich both in goddesses and bitches.
C01 226 *# 2027
C02   1 **[073 TEXT C02**]
C02   2 *<*4Masterpiece of horror*>
C02   3 **[EDITORIAL**]
C02   4    |^*4A*2FTER *0ten days of intermittent, near fatal ennui, the
C02   5 eleventh Berlin International Film Festival was suddenly jolted back
C02   6 to life by two extraordinary films, Bernhard Wicki's *"{Das Wunder
C02   7 des Malachias}**" (*"The Miracle of Father Malachias**") and
C02   8 Michaelangelo Antonioni's *"{La Notte}.**"
C02   9    |^The number of German film directors who have made first rate
C02  10 works in the last 25 years can be counted on the fingers of one hand:
C02  11 Frank Wysbar (*"{Fa"hrmann Maria}**"), Helmut Ka"utner (*"{Die
C02  12 Grosse Freiheit \0No. 7}**"), Herbert Selpin (*"Titanic**"), Wolfgang
C02  13 Staudte (*"Rotation**"), and Georg Klaren (*"Wozzeck**"). ^It would
C02  14 now seem that Wicki's name must be added to this list, for his new
C02  15 film may well be a landmark in the revitalisation of the German
C02  16 cinema.
C02  17    |^Wicki is not only a director. ^He began his career as an actor,
C02  18 had his first important film ro*?5le in Ka"utner's *"{Die letzt
C02  19 Bru"cke},**" and he also appears in the new Antonioni film. ^In 1950
C02  20 he began to take photographs not only in Germany but also in Africa
C02  21 and America. ^An exhibition of these works which is now on view in a
C02  22 Berlin gallery is most impressive. ^As Friedrich Du"rrenmatt, the
C02  23 Swiss playwright and author, wrote: ^*"Wicki's blacks and greys are
C02  24 not only the colours of the lost and the forgotten, but they are also
C02  25 the technical means of abstraction. ^Every unnecessary detail, all
C02  26 superfluous local colouring must be eliminated. ^He does not want the
C02  27 accuracy of a police photograph, but rather he wants to show the
C02  28 eternal in every instant.**"
C02  29    |^The chilling horror of *"Malachias**" is due as much to Wicki the
C02  30 photographer as to Wicki the director. ^His earlier film, *"{Die
C02  31 Bru"cke},**" was equally terrifying, but here the director moves out
C02  32 of the world of reality into an icy supernatural vacuum where the sun
C02  33 never shines. ^Following Bruce Marshall's original novel with
C02  34 considerable fidelity, the film tells the story of a little monk who
C02  35 prays that a disreputable night club near his church be removed. ^One
C02  36 night his prayer is answered and the offending establishment is
C02  37 suddenly transplanted to an island in the North Sea.
C02  38    |^But Father Malachias's troubles have only begun. ^Instead of
C02  39 having the desired effect, the miracle becomes exploited by a group of
C02  40 shrewd newspapermen. ^Soon a carnival springs up on the sight of the
C02  41 missing building. ^The Church rebukes the poor monk for his miracle,
C02  42 and as a crowning indignity the night club is given a gala society
C02  43 reopening on the island. ^Father Malachias goes to the island, prays,
C02  44 and in a second miracle the night club is replaced in its original
C02  45 setting.
C02  46    |^A summary of the story can give almost no indication of the scope
C02  47 of Wicki's artistry. ^He tells his story best in the faces of his
C02  48 crowds, recording every wrinkle and drop of sweat with brutal honesty,
C02  49 building up to a tremendous climax in the island orgy. ^Here, the
C02  50 guests arrive in ghost-like yachts, the wildly flapping white sails
C02  51 slashed by the glaring beacon of a lighthouse. ^When the final miracle
C02  52 does occur, it is accepted as a marvellous joke; no one has learned
C02  53 anything. ^Wicki suddenly returns to the city for a final epilogue.
C02  54 ^In complete silence he shows the faces of people walking in the
C02  55 streets, smug, content, satisfied, and thoroughly frightening.
C02  56    |^Wicki has succeeded in his second film in recording his personal
C02  57 apocalypse of the last days of a sick society. ^It is most unfair to
C02  58 call *"Malachias**" a cut-rate *"{Dolce Vita},**" for it is far more
C02  59 intimate and deeply felt. ^In 1944 Herbert Selpin tried a similar feat
C02  60 in *"Titanic**" by paralleling the last days of the Third Reich with
C02  61 the sinking of the great ocean liner, and paid for his audacity with
C02  62 his life. ^To judge from the press, Wicki is to pay by being
C02  63 journalistically crucified in his own country. ^Certainly there are
C02  64 things wrong with the film, but the print arrived from the cutting
C02  65 room only a few hours before its showing and could not be considered
C02  66 in finished state. ^One can only hope that British audiences will have
C02  67 a chance to judge this powerful creation for themselves in the near
C02  68 future; *"{Die Bru"cke}**" is still waiting two years after its
C02  69 German premie*?3re.
C02  70    |^*"{La Notte}**" will be shortly shown in London and for that
C02  71 reason deserves shorter mention here. ^Those who feared that Antonioni
C02  72 could never follow *"{L'Avventura}**" with another masterpiece can
C02  73 rest easy; he has done the near impossible and turned out what
C02  74 certainly must be one of the greatest studies of the renewal of love
C02  75 that the screen has ever seen. ^Less obviously complex than his last
C02  76 film, *"{La Notte}**" will undoubtedly have more popular appeal, but
C02  77 this is in no way a reflection on its seriousness. ^His method of
C02  78 painting with the camera has never been more exciting, exchanging the
C02  79 rocks of Sicily for the skyscrapers of Milan. ^But his society is the
C02  80 same, now even clearer, but touched with a melancholy compassion which
C02  81 is a strong sign of the maturity of his ultimate artistic vision.
C02  82    |^Strangely enough, the Berlin audience received the film with
C02  83 extreme coolness, much preferring Jean-Luc Godard's disappointing
C02  84 *"{Une Femme est une Femme},**" a ninety-one minute hymn to
C02  85 *"Vogue,**" *"{Cahiers du Cinema},**" and the worst aspects of the
C02  86 American cinema. ^From a brilliantly funny start, the work fizzles out
C02  87 into a series of repetitious sight-gags and personal jokes
C02  88 incomprehensible to the uninitiated (including four plugs for Charles
C02  89 Aznavour). ^Certainly one had the right to expect better. ^The other
C02  90 French entry, Michel Drach's *"{Ame*?2lie, ou de Temps d'Aimer},**"
C02  91 was late nineteenth-century French opera at its most beautiful, subtly
C02  92 romantic with a twilight melancholy which lifted an involved story to
C02  93 real heights.
C02  94    |^As a refuge from the welter of mediocre features, the
C02  95 retrospective shows are always of great interest, particularly the
C02  96 programmes devoted to the works of Richard Oswald. ^This director is
C02  97 at last being re-evaluated and given his proper place in the history
C02  98 of the German film. ^Most charming was his tongue-in-cheek
C02  99 *"{Unheimliche Geschichten}**" (1920), five ghost stories with a
C02 100 light touch, and there was much to admire in *"Dreyfus**" (1930) and
C02 101 the virtually unknown but extremely important *"1914**" (1931), which
C02 102 tries to show that it took more than just Germany to start the First
C02 103 World War.
C02 104    |^Prizes being what they are, Berlin is unusually generous in
C02 105 giving everyone something, and silver bears are awarded in every
C02 106 direction. ^Both the Antonioni and Wicki films took high honours, and
C02 107 the audience at the awards was particularly enthusiastic when one Miss
C02 108 Anna Kerima was selected as best actress for her work in the Godard
C02 109 film. ^Gifted with an interesting face, although little acting
C02 110 ability, she would seem to be well worth watching in the months to
C02 111 come.
C02 112 *<*6NEW FILMS*>
C02 113 *<*4by Isabel Quigly*>
C02 114    |^*4F*2OR *0once a cinema's advertisement does not exaggerate. ^The
C02 115 Academy advertises Jean-Luc Godard's {*4A bout de Souffle*?2}
C02 116 *0(translated as *4Breathless, *0X certificate) as *"the most eagerly
C02 117 awaited new film of the {6nouvelle vague},**" and although *"new**"
C02 118 is hardly accurate (the film is two years old and one of those that
C02 119 gave the new wave its original impetus and excitement), certainly the
C02 120 film that *"Sight and Sound**" called *"the group's intellectual
C02 121 manifesto**" is one that anyone with an interest in what the cinema is
C02 122 up to has been waiting to see. ^Few films have been so widely
C02 123 discussed before their public showing; and, as it turns out, few can
C02 124 ever have seemed such obvious prototypes, or have embodied so many
C02 125 attitudes and techniques that have since been imitated, exaggerated,
C02 126 caricatured, and (therefore) weakened, even made absurd.
C02 127    |^It is disappointing though perhaps inevitable that the young
C02 128 directors of the new wave made their best films at the beginning, and
C02 129 in most cases, far from going from strength to strength, have since
C02 130 either repeated themselves or deteriorated or (generally) both; for
C02 131 their great limitation is the lack, once they have made their original
C02 132 point and asserted their independence of what went before them, of
C02 133 anything much to say, and the fact that the world they deal with,
C02 134 though at first it may look excitingly emancipated, is in fact as
C02 135 restricted as that of drawing-room comedy. ^Its centre of gravity is
C02 136 Paris, its inhabitants young people*- students, spivs, petty crooks,
C02 137 layabouts of every kind*- all with a uniform sort (and style) of
C02 138 sexual promiscuity and social aimlessness.
C02 139    |
C02 140    |^*4H*2ERE *0in London in 1961, we are seeing *"{A bout de
C02 141 Souffle*?2}**" too late, of course, to feel its original impact, or
C02 142 even its originality very forcefully: but even a short time ago it
C02 143 must have seemed excitingly new, even revolutionary, one of the films
C02 144 that, sick of the old guard's deadness, stageyness, and sheer lack of
C02 145 film sense, started what was then an anti-cliche*?2 movement, a new
C02 146 way of looking at the world. ^But there is a gloomy truth in the old
C02 147 saws about revolutionaries turning into conservatives overnight: it is
C02 148 not that they are bribed or bludgeoned by the establishment, but that
C02 149 they turn into an establishment of their own. ^In no time at all their
C02 150 very revolutionary qualities are copied, and appear quite dismally
C02 151 hackneyed: what was once fresh and surprising becomes tricksy and
C02 152 affected, and by now, in the case of the new wave, the movement is so
C02 153 barnacled with its own cliche*?2s that it is hard to remember the
C02 154 high*- inordinately high*- hopes it began with.
C02 155    |^Certainly *"{A bout de Souffle*?2}**" (which is almost a group
C02 156 achievement: Godard directed, but Truffaut*- *"{Les 400 coups},**"
C02 157 *"Shoot the pianist**"*- wrote the script and Chabrol*- *"The
C02 158 cousins,**" *"{Les bonnes femmes}**"*- was technical supervisor) is
C02 159 extremely exciting, especially if you can forget what has come since.
C02 160 ^It has now the familiar ingredients*- a nihilistic attitude to
C02 161 everything, wry, built-in jokes, a murderer-thief hero*- but it has,
C02 162 too, a startling freshness of style, a really surprising and
C02 163 illuminating way of looking at objects, faces, people as they talk and
C02 164 feel, conversations as they perform (or don't manage to perform) their
C02 165 function of bringing people closer. ^It has a great look of speed and
C02 166 technical fun about it, of enormous cinematic enjoyment, and above all
C02 167 of cinematic sense. ^Much of it has that air of improvisation, as of
C02 168 off-the-cuff living, that once seemed so new and so attractive. ^The
C02 169 story (not that the story, in the sense of plot, matters much; but in
C02 170 the sense of situation and movement it matters a lot) is that of a man
C02 171 on the run (Jean-Paul Belmondo), who spends a few days with an
C02 172 American girl (Jean Seberg) who is bearing his child (though paternity
C02 173 is always a rather dubious business among the new wave): an affair
C02 174 that remains spiritually unconsummated as they move on to the final
C02 175 betrayal.
C02 176    |
C02 177    |^*4B*2ELMONDO *0reappears at the Paris Pullman in {*4Moderato
C02 178 Cantabile} *0(curiously translated into *4Seven Days... Seven Nights
C02 179 ... *0A certificate), Peter Brook's film made in France and shown last
C02 180 autumn at the London Film Festival. ^In spite of magnificent
C02 181 performances from him and from Jeanne Moreau, this has been fairly
C02 182 well trounced by the critics wherever it has appeared. ^Leisurely,
C02 183 even slow, rhythmically repetitive, the mysteriously simple story
C02 184 takes place on the banks of the Garonne, which becomes an
C02 185 unforgettable image. ^This is a very individual film, mannered,
C02 186 subtle, literary, made by a man who is not necessarily a film-maker,
C02 187 without the exclusively, ferociously cinematic eye of, say, Godard or
C02 188 Truffaut; but, to me at least, strangely satisfying and memorable.
C02 189    |^And for those who complain that Hollywood has grown too
C02 190 sophisticated to turn out anything really amusingly bad these days,
C02 191 anything like the old riproaring nonsenses in which Joan Crawford or
C02 192 Lana Turner broke their hearts in black velvet and mink, there is
C02 193 *4Parrish *0(director: Delmer Daves, A certificate: Warner), a
C02 194 concoction as absurd as you could hope for, and a parody of every
C02 195 family saga and regional-folksy film from giant downwards. ^With a
C02 196 large blond youth of quite dazzling dumbness called Troy Donahue; and
C02 197 Claudette Colbert, still charming amid the nonsense, and Karl Malden
C02 198 not knowing how to take it, all rolling eyeballs like a villain from
C02 199 East Lynne.
C02 200 *# 2006
C03   1 **[074 TEXT C03**]
C03   2 *<*4Film Virtues in A Taste of Honey*>
C03   3 *<\0Mr. Richardson's Skilful Direction*>
C03   4    |^*0The film version of Miss Shelagh Delaney's play *1A Taste of
C03   5 Honey *0opens at the Leicester Square Theatre tomorrow. ^It has been
C03   6 produced and directed by \0Mr. Tony Richardson, who is also
C03   7 part-author with Miss Delaney of the script, and the great advantages
C03   8 to be derived from this unity of conception and control are everywhere
C03   9 apparent.
C03  10    |^This is not a filmed play. ^It has been conceived throughout in
C03  11 terms of the cinema, and again and again it is the visual qualities of
C03  12 the story, and the marriage of the central characters to their
C03  13 background, which bring the film so vividly to life.
C03  14    |^In *1Fanny, *0which also has its premiere tomorrow, the director,
C03  15 \0Mr. Joshua Logan, attempted but failed to create the atmosphere of a
C03  16 city. ^In *1A Taste of Honey *0\0Mr. Richardson has taken a town in
C03  17 the industrial North of England and has made it live. ^The shabby
C03  18 streets and wet pavements, the school play-grounds, the public
C03  19 monuments and the rubbish strewn canals*- even the worn head-stones in
C03  20 the churchyard, *"sacred to the memory of**"*- are seen as an integral
C03  21 part of the story. ^The background is always alive and always
C03  22 changing; but the visual image is in keeping with the spoken word. ^We
C03  23 accept implicitly that these characters have grown naturally and
C03  24 inevitably from out of these surroundings.
C03  25    |^Against this industrial setting \0Mr. Richardson has told Miss
C03  26 Delaney's story. ^Its faults are still apparent. ^The plot is still
C03  27 shapeless and inconclusive*- indeed it is little more than an anecdote
C03  28 of city life, with a beginning but no end*- and the characters often
C03  29 seem to lack consistency. ^But there is heart in the telling, and an
C03  30 intense realism in the situation.
C03  31    |^A young girl lives in a single dingy room with her slatternly,
C03  32 promiscuous mother. ^In such surroundings she learns sex is something
C03  33 sordid, and when she experiences it for the first time herself it is
C03  34 incoherently, clumsily, but half shyly and half inquisitively. ^As is
C03  35 the case in *1Fanny *0her first lover is a sailor who leaves her to
C03  36 bear his child and sails away. ^In *1Fanny *0the pregnant girl is
C03  37 befriended by an old man. ^Here it is a young homosexual, estranged
C03  38 from women but yet moved by a strong maternal instinct to the unborn
C03  39 child as much as to the expectant mother, who acts as a protector and
C03  40 comforter to her in her hour of need. ^He shares her room and gives
C03  41 her his forlorn gift of companionship and sympathy*- *"you need
C03  42 someone to love you while you are looking for someone to love**".
C03  43    |^Miss Dora Bryan plays the mother as a flamboyant, down-to-earth
C03  44 sensualist who lacks perception but is not altogether without heart.
C03  45 ^\0Mr. Murray Melvin is the homosexual, his long lugubrious face
C03  46 reflecting a hidden and unexpressed compassion.
C03  47    |^Miss Rita Tushingham is the girl. ^It is always difficult when
C03  48 assessing a moving and eloquent performance by a young and immature
C03  49 screen actress to judge the extent to which her acting has been
C03  50 inspired by skilled and sensitive direction. ^\0Mr. Richardson has
C03  51 left his stamp so clearly on the rest of this film that some credit
C03  52 must be given to him; but here is undeniably a performance of
C03  53 surprising range and deep emotion, reflected in the face of an
C03  54 ordinary schoolgirl that is seemingly without make-up but is
C03  55 illuminated by a wonderful pair of eyes.
C03  56    |^It is \0Mr. Richardson's great gift that he can show a face in
C03  57 close-up and reveal the thoughts of the mind without a word being
C03  58 spoken. ^This he does repeatedly in this film, especially with Miss
C03  59 Tushingham.
C03  60 *<*2CONCERTOS ENLIVEN PROGRAMME*>
C03  61    |^*0Apart from Tchaikovsky's *1Romeo and Juliet *0fantasy overture,
C03  62 last night's Prom was entirely devoted to twentieth-century music,
C03  63 with two piano concertos by Alan Rawsthorne and Prokofiev (each
C03  64 composer's \0No. 1 in the medium) to enliven both halves of the
C03  65 programme.
C03  66    |^The two works are true bravura concertos lying within the grasp
C03  67 only of players of virtuoso technique; they are alike, too, in placing
C03  68 far more emphasis on crisply sparkling extravert brilliance than on
C03  69 inwardness of feeling though admittedly Rawsthorne briefly becomes
C03  70 more searching in his beautiful central chaconne. ^The soloist, Miss
C03  71 Moura Lympany, could not have been better chosen, for she has the
C03  72 clear-cut agility and vivacity of musicianship necessary for this kind
C03  73 of music, and temperamentally does not suffer from any temptation to
C03  74 delve more deeply into the notes than they warrant.
C03  75    |^On their own, the {0B.B.C.} Symphony Orchestra and Sir Malcolm
C03  76 Sargent went to the rescue of *"Pohjola's Daughter**", one of
C03  77 Sibelius's offspring now very much on the shelf. ^This is vividly
C03  78 scored but essentially naive programme music, perhaps more likely to
C03  79 appeal on home ground where the *1Kalevala *0is as real as the Bible.
C03  80    |^Sir Malcolm Sargent and the orchestra made every point with
C03  81 graphic clarity, and almost the same was true of Vaughan Williams's
C03  82 sixth symphony, which stood as the centrepiece of the programme. ^The
C03  83 exception was the finale of the symphony, which was played just a
C03  84 shade too fast and not quite insubstantially enough to convey the
C03  85 full, hollow horror of its implications*- the globe's vast desolation
C03  86 after the extinction of all human life.
C03  87 *<*4Miss Dodie Smith Provides for Kitchen Sink*>
C03  88 *<*2FROM OUR SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT*>
C03  89 *<LIVERPOOL, \0SEPT. 12.*>
C03  90    |^*0In her latest play, launched here last night, Miss Dodie Smith,
C03  91 accepting the challenge of the times, has made room for a kitchen
C03  92 sink. ^Its presence does nothing to sour these new arrivals among the
C03  93 author's brood of brain children. ^Or should one call them heart
C03  94 children? ^All their hearts are in the right place, and they run true
C03  95 and sweet to family form.
C03  96    |^There is even an older and more formidable challenge than the
C03  97 sink itself to test their fundamental niceness, for this basement
C03  98 kitchen of an old house in a London square is also the dining room of
C03  99 a boarding establishment run by an amiable and fluttery spinster. ^All
C03 100 her guests, whatever their age, lend a hand with the washing up (which
C03 101 is frequent) with almost as much enjoyment as if at last some
C03 102 miraculous detergent were being advertised in the live theatre.
C03 103    |^No one is cantankerous, there are no petty jealousies or mutual
C03 104 animosities. ^Who but Miss Dodie Smith would have thought boarding
C03 105 house comedy could be written without them?
C03 106    |^This boarding house has a pronounced list to stageward. ^It
C03 107 accommodates young members of the profession and also a middle-aged
C03 108 actor manque*?2 who has been out of touch with the world for 20 years
C03 109 and is at first suspected of having been serving a prison sentence.
C03 110    |^Actually he has been caring for his invalid but equally
C03 111 histrionic wife who has died and left him free to fulfil, with her
C03 112 blessing, his long thwarted ambition. ^When he has been gently
C03 113 de-hammed for the modern stage by a young actress who is his
C03 114 fellow-lodger he does land a contract. ^In the meanwhile we watch him
C03 115 perform marvels of cooking and, generally at the same time, listen to
C03 116 him delivering the most purple and familiar patches of Shakespeare.
C03 117    |^There are a pair of pathetic fuddy-duddies who have parted with
C03 118 their house because they have had *"a good offer**" for it, and a
C03 119 hypochondriacal old bachelor who proposes to the gentle proprietress,
C03 120 but is not accepted until she has made the surprising confession that
C03 121 she, unlike her once suspected guest, has really been to prison.
C03 122    |^This is Miss Smith's highest flight of imagination; the offence
C03 123 was the absentminded theft of a library book for which in her youth
C03 124 the otherwise innocent Miss Edie got 14 days without the option. ^The
C03 125 inclusion of a titled *"char**" on the establishment is perhaps the
C03 126 most deliberately modern touch.
C03 127    |^Miss Jennifer Stirling plays Miss Edie with great skill and charm
C03 128 and \0Mr. Willard Stoker effectively coordinates a good cast.
C03 129 *<*4Rare Acting in Betti Play*>
C03 130 *<A Quietly Effective Production*>
C03 131 *<Oxford Playhouse: *1Irene*>
C03 132 **[LIST**]
C03 133 *<*0Directed by *2BRYAN STONEHOUSE*>
C03 134 *<FROM OUR SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT*>
C03 135 *<OXFORD, *4\0Sept. 12*>
C03 136    |^*1Irene *0is not perhaps one of Betti's masterpieces, but it is a
C03 137 splendidly efficient play, constructed with sure instinct for
C03 138 theatrical effect which never seemed to let this dramatist down.
C03 139    |^The background is that rough, raw, savage land of southern Italy
C03 140 which Betti explored in a number of plays. ^Here it is combined with
C03 141 another theme dear to his heart, the workings of justice. ^A nice,
C03 142 simple sergeant of the Carabinieri arrives in a strange village at
C03 143 night to investigate some irregularities concerning the town clerk.
C03 144 ^By chance he lights first of all upon the clerk's house, stays there
C03 145 for the night and becomes disturbingly involved with the clerk, his
C03 146 faded, pretentious wife and, particularly, his beautiful crippled
C03 147 daughter, Irene.
C03 148    |^The next morning he hears the evidence against his erstwhile
C03 149 host, and learns of the bitter enmity in which the mayor and the rest
C03 150 hold him. ^Where does the truth lie? ^How far can the sergeant, caught
C03 151 between his feelings for Irene and her family on the one hand and the
C03 152 evidence and the veiled blackmail of the mayor on the other reach a
C03 153 fair and unbiased decision?
C03 154    |^Especially when he learns that the girl, whom he believed pure
C03 155 and innocent, is in fact the local prostitute. ^Despite this she still
C03 156 retains a strange innocence, somewhere between that of the idiot and
C03 157 that of the saint, which sets up violent and contradictory emotions in
C03 158 those who visit her as well as in the sergeant: they want her to go
C03 159 and yet they want her to stay; he does not know until almost too late
C03 160 whether he loves her or loathes her.
C03 161    |^Arguably, the dramatist has committed a technical error in
C03 162 allowing Irene to speak for herself; we would be altogether clearer in
C03 163 our minds about her if she remained a flawed but beautiful enigma,
C03 164 seen but not heard. ^However, Miss Pinkie Johnstone makes her few
C03 165 brief scenes effective, and \0Mr. Dinsdale Landen, in the longest and
C03 166 most exacting role, that of the sergeant, gives a performance of rare
C03 167 intelligence and restrained power. ^\0Mr. Bryan Stonehouse's
C03 168 production is quietly effective, giving full value to the formal
C03 169 elements of Betti's writing without over-emphasizing them.
C03 170 *<*2A MORALITY PLAY ON AMBITION*>
C03 171    |^*0Last night's play in the *"Play of the Week**" series on
C03 172 independent television, *1Then We Fall, *0by \0Mr. Paul Ferris, was a
C03 173 morality on the not unfamiliar theme of the destructive power of
C03 174 unbridled ambition. ^It went, perhaps, some distance beyond most
C03 175 treatments of its subject by attempting to generate a melodramatic
C03 176 inevitability which left its central character and the world around
C03 177 him in complete, unredeemable desolation.
C03 178    |^We could, perhaps, say whether or not the attempt succeeded if we
C03 179 had a little more faith in the way in which \0Mr. Ferris manipulated
C03 180 his characters. ^Mervyn Morris abandons his job as a pilot in a Welsh
C03 181 seaport, finds a position with the local paper, treads underfoot
C03 182 everyone, especially his wife, with whom he deals: his wife leaves him
C03 183 for the paper's shy, gentle editor. ^At which he prevails upon his
C03 184 father-in-law, a miserly, fanatical Welsh nationalist, to murder the
C03 185 editor for him. ^No suspicions are aroused but no problems are solved
C03 186 for he loses his job because, at the moment of the murder, he is
C03 187 standing in front of television cameras and, with his nerves on edge,
C03 188 talking tactlessly.
C03 189    |^\0Mr. William Lucas (Morris) is always insensitively pushing,
C03 190 Miss Sheila Allen his wife, always palely appealing, \0Mr. James
C03 191 Maxwell, the editor, always comically abashed by the events, and \0Mr.
C03 192 Aubrey Richards, the father-in-law, always comically grotesque; they
C03 193 were not asked to modulate from their set moods but played with proper
C03 194 efficiency and, in the case of \0Mr. Richards, with lavish and
C03 195 suitably gaudy colour. ^Only \0Mr. Lucas's actions, therefore, arose
C03 196 explicably from appreciable motives. ^The rest, one feels, were driven
C03 197 to effective action by the author in spite of the ineffectuality with
C03 198 which he had endowed them. ^One hopes that he is not asking us to
C03 199 believe that, because of their odd accents, they act oddly like the
C03 200 queer foreigners of tradition.
C03 201 *# 2008
C04   1 **[075 TEXT C04**]
C04   2 *<*6FRANKLY, IT'S NOT FOR FRANKIE...*>
C04   3    |^NEXT *4month that friendly, effervescent performer Frankie
C04   4 Vaughan will burst on to the London Palladium stage in a new show.
C04   5    |^*0To paraphrase his well-known ditty: ^*"He'll have the
C04   6 limelight, they'll give him the girls*- and leave the rest to him.**"
C04   7    |^I have a hunch that he will feel more at home in the old,
C04   8 star-studded West End than he will ever feel in Hollywood.
C04   9    |^*4His American bosses, 20th-Century Fox, have recently given
C04  10 Frankie the full, razzamataz, red-carpet treatment.
C04  11    |^*0But they haven't done a thing for his film career that Anna
C04  12 Neagle and Herbert Wilcox were not doing better here, before the
C04  13 platinum-plated Hollywood carrot was dangled before his nose.
C04  14    |^In his first Hollywood picture, *"Let's Make Love,**" he was
C04  15 swamped by the know-how of Marilyn Monroe and Yves Montand. ^Against
C04  16 this couple Frankie, in a cardboard role, didn't stand a chance.
C04  17    |^Now comes *4*"The Right Approach**" *0(Rialto, *"A**"), and it's
C04  18 a glum business.
C04  19    |^He plays an aspiring actor*- a selfish, arrogant, brash,
C04  20 ambitious, unscrupulous heel*- who would tread on anybody's neck to
C04  21 get a break in the Hollywood ratrace.
C04  22 *<*5Cynical*>
C04  23    |^*0He double-crosses the five pals with whom he lives, cheats a
C04  24 waitress (Juliet Prowse) and cynically uses a magazine editress
C04  25 (Martha Hyer) to get ahead.
C04  26    |^*4Frankie Vaughan is too nice a chap to ring quite true as a
C04  27 smooth-tongued, ill-mannered Yank.
C04  28    |^*0His best moments are when he swings breezily into the title
C04  29 song. ^But 6,000 miles seems a heck of a way to go for a new hit song.
C04  30    |^He might be well advised to think hard and long before his next
C04  31 jump into the Hollywood arena.
C04  32    |^*6VERDICT: ^*4Vaughan should have by-passed this approach.
C04  33    |
C04  34    |^R*2ONALD *0Lewis has just left for his first taste of the
C04  35 Hollywood treatment, thanks to a sound performance in *4*"Taste of
C04  36 Fear**" *0(Warner Theatre, *"X**").
C04  37    |^*4He has earned his break.
C04  38    |^*0The film is a well-made variation on that sinister yarn in
C04  39 which half the cast try to persuade the heroine that she is out of her
C04  40 mind.
C04  41    |^Despite flagrant cheating the eerie atmosphere is built up
C04  42 neatly.
C04  43    |^*4Susan Strasberg is the crippled damsel in distress.
C04  44    |^*0Stepmother Ann Todd and doctor Christopher Lee are also
C04  45 effectively around.
C04  46    |^They provide some chilly red herrings in this *"Find-the-body**"
C04  47 thriller.
C04  48    |^*6VERDICT: ^*4Don't believe all you see and hear!
C04  49    |
C04  50    |^N*2OT *0for the first time the homely mug of Sidney James has
C04  51 pumped life into a slim, strained comedy.
C04  52    |^He does his rescue act in *4*"Double Bunk**" *0(Leicester-square
C04  53 Theatre, *"A**").
C04  54 *<*5Strength*>
C04  55    |^*0Navigator Sid is a tower of strength when newly-weds Ian
C04  56 Carmichael and Janette Scott let loose their ancient houseboat on a
C04  57 honeymoon trip down the river.
C04  58    |^The film starts off brightly enough but, half-way through, the
C04  59 plot (as well as the boat) springs a near-disastrous leak.
C04  60    |^Familiar members of Britain's repertory team of comedy
C04  61 character-actors jump through equally familiar hoops to mild laughter.
C04  62    |^*6VERDICT: ^*4The *"bunk**" needed doubling.
C04  63 *<*7DONALD *'TAKES**' THE EVENING*>
C04  64 *<LAST NIGHT'S {0T V}*>
C04  65 *<*4by *6CLIFFORD DAVIS*>
C04  66    |^*6DONALD HOUSTON *4had a big success on {0A T V}'s *"Drama
C04  67 '61**" last night as a smooth, scheming jewel thief in a play by
C04  68 Jacques Gillies, *"The Takers.**"
C04  69    |^*0A polished production by Quentin Lawrence, here, held together
C04  70 by \0Mr. Houston's accomplished performance as the master mind behind
C04  71 a gang of crooks.
C04  72    |^This plot to rob a French millionaire of *+300,000 worth of
C04  73 jewellery struck me as ingenious. ^The play had style, moved at a
C04  74 quick pace and everyone did well.
C04  75    |^But it was \0Mr. Houston's evening.
C04  76    |^Earlier, on the Palladium show I found Stanley Holloway's act too
C04  77 long and not particularly entertaining.
C04  78    |^It was also a mistake to re-book Gene Detroy and his performing
C04  79 chimpanzees so soon after their previous appearance.
C04  80    |^Their offering last night differed little from their earlier act
C04  81 on this show a week or so ago. ^But the Mudlarks, with Jeff Mudd out
C04  82 of the Army and back with sister Mary and brother Fred, were in
C04  83 bright, zestful form.
C04  84    |^Why only two numbers, though? ^It was not enough.
C04  85 *<*5A Rix mix*>
C04  86 *<*4by *6RICHARD SEAR*>
C04  87    |^*6*"A FAIR COP,**" *0the {0B B C} Whitehall farce last night,
C04  88 looked like a rabbit warren in a field of corn.
C04  89    |^I can't recall a production where so many comics bolted in and
C04  90 out of holes so often.
C04  91    |^The jokes were a reshuffle of the same old lot*- this time Brian
C04  92 Rix lost his skirt instead of his trousers.
C04  93    |^*4The action moved at tremendous speed, backed by some wonderful
C04  94 timing by the cast.
C04  95    |^*0I especially liked the tea-cup scene where six of the cast
C04  96 changed cups with the dexterity of Chinese jugglers.
C04  97    |^Carole Shelley as the newly-wed and Larry Noble as Smiler Perkins
C04  98 were the most laughable.
C04  99    |^They alone used a sharp edge to their humour and cut through the
C04 100 gormless standing corn around them. ^Perhaps it was accidental*- I
C04 101 hope not.
C04 102    |^*4If ever a bag of humour needed a thorough shaking up the
C04 103 Whitehall farce is it when it comes to television.
C04 104 *<*6IT'S AN OLD \2PIANNA PIN-UP*>
C04 105 *<ON THE RECORD*>
C04 106 *<*4by Patrick Doncaster*>
C04 107    |^*6HOW *4do you get on records? ^Well, you've got to have
C04 108 something different.
C04 109    |^*0Sing slightly flat. ^All the *4good *0singers sing in tune.
C04 110    |^Twang a guitar slightly *4off *0key. ^Everybody's fed up with the
C04 111 right way*- so the best-seller charts say. ^*4Play an *6OLD *4\2pianna
C04 112 instead of a new one.
C04 113    |^*0You got to get it into your head, son... people don't like
C04 114 things as they should be*- not on record, anyway.
C04 115    |^Thus, musician *4David Lisbon's *0chances of being a starred disc
C04 116 solo pianist were greatly enhanced when he dug out *6A PACKET OF
C04 117 DRAWING-PINS.
C04 118    |^*0*"Why not,**" thought ex-soldier \0Mr. Lisbon, who is
C04 119 twenty-three, and lives in Dagenham, Essex, *"press a thumb-tack into
C04 120 the nose of the hammers that strike the piano strings?**"
C04 121    |^He did, on his piano at home. ^There weren't enough tacks and he
C04 122 got only the middle hammers done.
C04 123    |^Then he tried it out for sound.
C04 124    |^*4Um-chink... um-chink... it went. ^Slightly flat and jangly in
C04 125 part. ^*6DELIGHTFUL!
C04 126    |^*0He put the sound on tape. ^The tape went to the Philips
C04 127 company.
C04 128    |^Within two days \0Mr. Lisbon had a record contract. ^And they
C04 129 hauled his thumb-tacked joanna the thirteen miles to London for his
C04 130 first session.
C04 131    |^Now along comes his solo disc, featuring two of his own
C04 132 compositions, *"Deerstalker**" and *"Almost Grown Up.**"
C04 133    |^*6VERDICT: ^*4\0Mr. Lisbon has it taped. ^And tacked.
C04 134    |^*0And he says: ^*"Just as well I had only one box of tacks*- it
C04 135 might have been so different....**"
C04 136    |^More news from the ivory-thumping \0dept.... ^*4Russ Conway,
C04 137 *0who has tinkled his way to fame on an old \2pianna, comes in with
C04 138 another of his own works: *"Parade of the Poppets**" (Columbia).
C04 139    |^But not one of his nimble-fingered best.
C04 140 *<*7CUTE*>
C04 141    |^*6GERMANY'S *4Russ Conway is a pianist who calls himself *6CRAZY
C04 142 OTTO. ^*4But nothing crazy about his pianistics.
C04 143    |^*0He pounds merrily away at a piece called *"Piccadilly**"
C04 144 (Polydor). ^I find it cute.
C04 145    |^American pianist *4Floyd Cramer, *0who played for Elvis on *"It's
C04 146 Now or Never,**" looks like having a success on his own with *"On the
C04 147 Rebound**" ({0RCA}).
C04 148    |
C04 149    |^*4N*2EW *0boy on the vocal front is *4Rolly Daniels, *0who comes
C04 150 5,000 miles from India to seek disc fame.
C04 151    |^Comedian Hal Monty saw him in Bombay, became his manager. ^And
C04 152 such is Hal's faith that he brings him to Europe.
C04 153    |^*4Now Rolly gets his big break*- a record, the modern Aladdin's
C04 154 lamp of show business. ^Become a success with a disc and hey presto!
C04 155 ^You're a star....
C04 156    |^*0Rolly sings with assuredness *"Bella Bella Marie**"
C04 157 (Parlophone), a lively song that changes tempo mid-way.
C04 158    |^I don't think he will storm the charts with this one, but it's a
C04 159 good start.
C04 160    |
C04 161    |^*4C*2HRIS CHARLES, *039, who lives in Stockton-on-Tees, is an
C04 162 accountant. ^He is also a director of a couple of garages.
C04 163    |^*4And he finds time as well to be a lyric writer.
C04 164 *<*7OBLIGED*>
C04 165    |^*0He writes with *4Tolchard Evans, *0composer of *"Lady of
C04 166 Spain**" and other big hits.
C04 167    |^Tolch, as he is known in Tin Pan Alley, likes songs with a month
C04 168 in the title. ^He wrote *"My September Love,**" the big David
C04 169 Whitfield hit of 1956.
C04 170    |^*"Let's have another song with a month in it,**" said Tolch.
C04 171 ^\0Mr. Charles obliged with *"April Serenade.**"
C04 172    |^This week it appears, a tuneful melody sung impeccably by Robert
C04 173 Earl (Philips).
C04 174 *<*6TELEPAGE *4by *6JACK BELL*>
C04 175 *<*7A PRODUCER VANISHES*>
C04 176    |^*6PRODUCER *4Russell Turner, 33, provides his last programme for
C04 177 the {0B B C} tonight with Robert Harbin's *"Mystery and Magic**"
C04 178 (7.30).
C04 179    |^*0After six years with the Corporation, during which he started
C04 180 *"Juke Box Jury**" and directed *"Six-Five Special,**" Turner is
C04 181 aiming to go into free-lance {0T V}, film and stage production work.
C04 182    |^*4*"I feel I've done all I can at the {0B B C},**" he told me.
C04 183 ^*"We mutually agreed to part.**"
C04 184    |^*0Escapologist Dill-Russell is a guest in Harbin's show tonight.
C04 185    |^*4Boxing fans can see an eight-round feather-weight contest
C04 186 between Chris Elliot and Harry Carroll from Leicester ({0B B C},
C04 187 8.25).
C04 188 *<*6*'NATIONAL**' AIRS*>
C04 189    |^A *2SONGS-OF-BRITAIN *0medley is sung by David Hughes in his
C04 190 *"Make Mine Music**" ({0B B C}, 9.30 {0p.m.}).
C04 191    |^The numbers include *"Scotland the Brave,**" *"Men of Harlech,**"
C04 192 *"McNamara's Band,**" *"Greensleeves**" and *"English Rose.**"
C04 193    |^*4Fay Compton stars in *"No Hiding Place**" ({0I T V}, 9.35
C04 194 {0p.m.}). ^She plays the possessive mother of a man whose hobby
C04 195 revolves round a doll's house.
C04 196    |
C04 197    |^T*2HREE *0people will be hypnotised in tonight's *"Lifeline**"
C04 198 ({0B B C}, 10.15).
C04 199    |^*4They will be asked to comment on the design of everyday
C04 200 articles such as a chair and a motor-car.
C04 201 *<*6WHAT?*>
C04 202    |^*0The idea is to see what happens when parts of the mind not
C04 203 normally available without hypnosis are used.
C04 204    |^{0*4I *0T V} have postponed Malcolm Muggeridge's *"Appointment
C04 205 with playwright Arnold Wesker.**"
C04 206    |^*4Instead, Muggeridge's appointment will be with Sir Roy Welensky
C04 207 the Premier of the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland (10.30
C04 208 {0p.m.}).
C04 209    |^*0Say Granada {0T V}, the producers: ^*"We decided to make the
C04 210 switch because of the topicality of African affairs. ^The Wesker
C04 211 interview will be seen at a later date.**"
C04 212 *<*6LAST NIGHT'S {0TV}*>
C04 213 *<*4The soldier who was scared*>
C04 214 *<by *6RICHARD SEAR*>
C04 215    |^A*2CTOR *0Tom Courtenay was an outstanding success last night in
C04 216 {0I T V}'s *"Private Potter,**" his first big {0T V} part.
C04 217    |^*4The play was a brilliantly-written essay on soldiering which
C04 218 stated that a fighting man could only be regarded as a machine.
C04 219    |^*0Potter screamed during an action, and was arrested. ^He claimed
C04 220 he had seen a vision of God*- only the padre and his {0C O} believed
C04 221 him.
C04 222    |^Courtenay played the part with a gawky, Northern defiance. ^The
C04 223 cameras played continuously on his craggy face, and obstinate, baffled
C04 224 eyes. ^They stripped him of his ugly battle-dress, to leave him for
C04 225 what he was*- Potter, a frightened boy who had a vision.
C04 226    |^*4It was a splendid interpretation of the part.
C04 227    |^*0The rest of the cast were well chosen, with James Maxwell
C04 228 making a fine job of the sympathetic {0C O}.
C04 229 *<*6IMPOSSIBLE?*- NO!*>
C04 230    |^*4Paul Daneman gave another first-class performance last night as
C04 231 a wartime naval officer in the {0B B C}'s *"The Little Key.**"
C04 232    |^*0The play was no more than a figment of the imagination which
C04 233 asked the viewer to believe in a beautiful ghost. ^It would have been
C04 234 an impossible piece of television but for clever production by Michael
C04 235 Hayes.
C04 236    |^He captured the atmosphere of fog and mystery to great effect.
C04 237 *<*6*'NOT FAIR**' *4say *6VIEWERS*>
C04 238 *<*6LAST NIGHT'S {0T V}*>
C04 239 *<*4by *6RICHARD SEAR*>
C04 240    |^MORE *4than 100 viewers complained to the {0B B C} last night
C04 241 that an American film, *"Britain*- Blood, Sweat, and Tears... Plus
C04 242 Twenty Years,**" was anti-British.
C04 243    |^*0The film replaced *"What's My Line?**" and *"Be My Guest**"
C04 244 programmes because of an electricians' strike.
C04 245    |^It showed Britain today through the eyes of an American {0T V}
C04 246 reporter, Eric Sevareid, and British personalities. ^Among them*-
C04 247 Professor Dennis Brogan, Shelagh Delaney, and Alan Sillitoe.
C04 248    |^The film covered a wide aspect of the British scene, ranging from
C04 249 pubs, the Eton wall game, to the European Common Market.
C04 250    |^Shelagh Delaney and Alan Sillitoe attacked education.
C04 251    |^It was left to reporter Sevareid to make the strongest
C04 252 criticisms. ^He said that in the race of the modern nations, Britain
C04 253 was slipping behind....
C04 254 *# 2012
C05   1 **[076 TEXT C05**]
C05   2 *<*4Fine Classical Chorus*>
C05   3 *<*4Imparting Ritual Significance*>
C05   4    |^*0Scala Theatre: *1The Choephori.
C05   5    |^*0Though \0Mr. Dimitrios Rondiris's ideas about the use of
C05   6 material from folksong and folkdance in accommodating a classical
C05   7 chorus to the modern stage had some chances of expression in his
C05   8 production of the Sophocles *1Electra *0last week, the real test comes
C05   9 with the Aeschylian equivalent, *1The Choephori, *0and its tailpiece,
C05  10 *1The Eumenides, *0which make up the second programme of the Greek
C05  11 Tragedy Theatre's season.
C05  12    |^For the role of the chorus here is much more important and
C05  13 active, particularly in *1The Eumenides, *0than it ever is in
C05  14 Sophocles, and the ritual element in the drama, always a stumbling
C05  15 block for modern audiences, is much closer to the surface. ^In the
C05  16 first play the chorus are embodiments of right judgment in the
C05  17 abstract, applying the tests of religion to the situations before them
C05  18 and urging the characters to the proper actions even when these, mere
C05  19 individual human beings, may be torn by doubt.
C05  20    |^In the second they become the Furies, the embodiments of one
C05  21 aspect of the divine vengeance, which pursues the slayer of his own
C05  22 kind, even if that slaughter was divinely ordained, and finally the
C05  23 impersonal prophets of universal reconciliation.
C05  24    |^\0Mr. Rondiris's handling of the chorus here is masterly
C05  25 throughout: in *1The Choephori *0they still perform the function of
C05  26 sympathetic decor, as in *1Electra, *0but if anything with more
C05  27 subtlety and control, and when their measured speech passes over into
C05  28 song the tones are, remotely but unmistakably, those taught by the
C05  29 Orthodox liturgy*- the readiest way of imparting ritual significance
C05  30 to their words for a modern audience.
C05  31    |^In *1The Eumenides *0they are different again; as the Furies
C05  32 pursuing Orestes they take a direct part in the action, and are thus
C05  33 required to project emotions of their own instead of merely reflecting
C05  34 the emotions of the central characters. ^Savage and weirdly masked,
C05  35 they swirl in a turbulent mass about the stage, eschewing until the
C05  36 very end the regular, balanced compositions of the earlier play.
C05  37    |^The human beings involved in the intricate working out of divine
C05  38 justice are relatively less important than in later Greek tragedy, but
C05  39 they are strongly played by actors with whom we are already familiar
C05  40 from *1Electra. ^*0The protagonist in both plays is Orestes, and \0Mr.
C05  41 \0D. Veakis has more chance than he had in the Sophocles to win us
C05  42 over to his rather exaggerated style of acting, though he still does
C05  43 not quite succeed.
C05  44    |^The Electra and Clytemnestra of this earlier production have
C05  45 changed places this time (presumably so that Miss Aspassia
C05  46 Papathanassiou could appear in both plays, as Clytemnestra and her
C05  47 ghost). ^Miss Thalia Kalliga's Electra is as impressive as her
C05  48 Clytemnestra, but inevitably Miss Papathanassiou with her incandescent
C05  49 pallor and the vibrant intensity of her stage presence seizes our
C05  50 attention every moment she is on the scene and it is a measure of her
C05  51 power over the whole production that when the curtain finally descends
C05  52 it is not the harmony of the close, but Clytemnestra's ghost crying in
C05  53 the night for vengeance, which remains most potently in our minds.
C05  54 *<*6FINE EXHIBITION OF SPORTING PRINTS*>
C05  55 *<*2AGE OF THE COLOURED AQUATINT*>
C05  56    |^*0The exhibition of English and French engravings of the
C05  57 eighteenth and nineteenth centuries at \0*1Messrs. Agnew's Galleries,
C05  58 43, Old Bond Street, *0until July 8, is a pleasant reminder mainly of
C05  59 the age of the coloured aquatint though it includes also examples of
C05  60 the delicate French line-engravings after Moreau \le Jeune from {*1Le
C05  61 Monument de Costume}.
C05  62    |^*0It represents in impressions of excellent quality such famous
C05  63 prints as Debucourt's *"{La Promenade Publique}**" of 1792, the view
C05  64 of Westminster Hall and Abbey engraved by \0D. Havell after \0J.
C05  65 Glendall, and the now rare coaching subjects of James Pollard of which
C05  66 *"The Royal Mails preparing to start for the West of England, 1831**"
C05  67 (from the *"Swan with Two Necks**", Cheapside) is a notable example.
C05  68 ^Joseph Farington gains from translation into aquatint in the plates
C05  69 from Boydell's *"History of the River Thames**" and some interesting
C05  70 views of early nineteenth century Greece include an aquatint of the
C05  71 Parthenon (Dodwell-Bennett) as it must have appeared shortly after
C05  72 Lord Elgin had removed the *"Marbles**". ^The sporting prints by
C05  73 Herring and Alken are good examples of an always popular genre.
C05  74 *<*6PICTORIAL CONFECTIONS*>
C05  75    |^*0Closely alike in style, the pictures of Dietz Edzard and
C05  76 Suzanne Eisendieck may be suitably described as *"confections**" and
C05  77 the sugared quality the word implies pervades the current exhibition
C05  78 of their work at the *1Adams Gallery, 24, Davis Street, \0W.1,
C05  79 *0giving to views of Venice and Normandy a charm curiously remote from
C05  80 reality. ^The idyllic combination of figure and landscape in which
C05  81 these artists have specialized needs a sweet tooth of appreciation.
C05  82 ^The exhibition continues until June 30.
C05  83 *<*4Moral Earnestness in Ballet*>
C05  84    |^*0The social and aesthetic climate of Soviet ballet is so
C05  85 different from our own that in considering Russian ballet today we
C05  86 start at a considerable disadvantage. ^The sense of moral earnestness,
C05  87 the view that art should be a guide and mentor for the people, which
C05  88 is the substructure of Soviet choreography, can produce effects which
C05  89 will strike us as naive or old-fashioned; yet this would not perhaps
C05  90 be so important were it not for the fact that the use made of dance
C05  91 movement and of performers must necessarily reflect this same feeling.
C05  92    |^The choreographic manner*- where the hero's leaps are an
C05  93 affirmation of faith, and the heroine, held aloft, is woman-kind as a
C05  94 triumphant inspiration and reward for the hero's endeavours*- has an
C05  95 initial excitement which too often declines into dramatic cliche*?2,
C05  96 to the detriment of our western enjoyment of the dancing as a stage
C05  97 spectacle.
C05  98    |^These are the very faults of *1The Stone Flower *0with which the
C05  99 Leningrad State Kirov Ballet opened their season at Covent Garden last
C05 100 night. ^The plot tells of a stone-cutter, Danila, loving a young girl,
C05 101 Katerina, and dissatisfied with his art. ^His longing to create a
C05 102 perfect stone flower takes him to a magical cavern, presided over by
C05 103 the Mistress of the Copper Mountain. ^There he learns the secrets of
C05 104 his craft, and there Katerina comes at last to fetch him away from the
C05 105 Mistress of the Mountain, who reluctantly lets him go.
C05 106    |^It is, baldly, an uneven work, but even in our limited experience
C05 107 of Soviet ballet, an interesting one, and an unusual departure from
C05 108 anything we have seen previously from Russia. ^Gone is the realist
C05 109 de*?2cor; instead, a back drop rises to reveal the various changes for
C05 110 scenes which are otherwise played on a bare stage and with simple
C05 111 black wings.
C05 112    |^The choreography is the first major creation of the young Yuri
C05 113 Grigorovich, and it demonstrates a talent not as yet up to the demands
C05 114 of a large work. ^For Danila and Katerina he uses a free-flowering
C05 115 classicism, while for the Mistress of the Mountain he has devised a
C05 116 quasi-acrobatic style, sinuous, angular, and very brilliant. ^He is
C05 117 most successful in adapting folk-dancing for the chorus of peasants
C05 118 and gipsies, and he shows a remarkable gift for movement for a large
C05 119 corps, dazzling, intricate, and with a muscular brio that is
C05 120 enormously effective. ^But against this we have to set scenes for the
C05 121 {6corps de ballet} of jewels that seem fidgety and sterile exercises
C05 122 in academic movement, lacking any originality.
C05 123    |^The three principals are admirable: as Danila, \0Mr. Yuri
C05 124 Soloviev gives a tremendous performance; he has a prodigious technique
C05 125 in leaps and turns, he is a fine partner, and conveys that sense of
C05 126 dramatic conviction that can disarm our criticism of a character that
C05 127 is not fully explored in the ballet. ^As Katerina and the Mistress of
C05 128 the Mountain Miss Alla Sizova and Miss Alla Osipenko are well
C05 129 contrasted, with Miss Sizova's warm lyrical style matched against the
C05 130 force and e*?2clat of Miss Osipenko.
C05 131    |^The company are seen best in the character dances; as peasants
C05 132 and gypsies in a fair scene that inevitably recalls *1Petrushka *0they
C05 133 show just how much dramatic variety can be obtained from a superb
C05 134 corps. ^In the *"classical**" sequences we can only appreciate the
C05 135 difference that still exists between Leningrad and Moscow dancers;
C05 136 here is a style that seems nearer our own, more reserved and less
C05 137 emotionally extreme than the Bolshoi.
C05 138    |^The Prokofiev score, magnificently handled by \0Mr. Niazi, is
C05 139 adequate as ballet music, but a first hearing does not reveal it as of
C05 140 the standard of *1Romeo and Juliet, *0or even as appealing as
C05 141 *1Cinderella.
C05 142 *<*6WIDE COLOUR ON HARPSICHORD*>
C05 143 *<MISS SILVIA KIND'S RECITAL*>
C05 144    |^*0In spite of the harpsichord's popularity, true harpsichordists
C05 145 these days are very rare. ^Miss Silvia Kind, who played a varied and
C05 146 consistently interesting programme at Wigmore Hall last night, can
C05 147 hardly be considered one just yet.
C05 148    |^An attack of nerves in Bach's Italian Concerto caused her to take
C05 149 the outer movements at perilously fast tempi with scarcely a thought
C05 150 for any detailed phrasing of their melodic lines; if at the start of a
C05 151 recital this could be forgiven, her reliance on colour effects to
C05 152 underline the structure of the music*- which unfortunately persisted
C05 153 throughout much of the remainder of it*- most certainly could not.
C05 154 ^The expressive powers of a harpsichord are by no means directly
C05 155 proportionate to the number of registrations it possesses.
C05 156    |^In some seventeenth-century programme pieces by John Bull,
C05 157 Bernardo Pasquini and Alessandro Poglietti the employment of a wide
C05 158 variety of colour {6*1per se} *0seemed appropriate enough; in
C05 159 Mozart, however (the *1Duport *0variations \0K.573), such superficial
C05 160 treatment chopped up the music altogether too much.
C05 161    |^But the performance of Bach's D major Toccata *2BWV *0912, with
C05 162 which Miss Kind ended her recital, combined some splendidly bold and
C05 163 free declamatory playing with keen perception of the work's continuity
C05 164 and nobility of outline. ^It suggested, in fact, that Miss Kind is a
C05 165 very much better harpsichordist than this recital as a whole revealed.
C05 166 *<*6UNEQUAL SUPPORT FOR THREE AUTHORS*>
C05 167    |^*0Webber-Douglas School: *1Triple Bill
C05 168    |^*0Thirteen second-year students appeared in last night's
C05 169 performance, and one's judgment of them might have been fairer, if the
C05 170 running order of the programme had been reversed. ^As it was, their
C05 171 failure to make the first two items work as play, was irritating, and
C05 172 caused one to undervalue even those pieces of acting which obviously
C05 173 had merit, such as those of Miss Jocelyn Carney in Act *=1 of *1The
C05 174 Chalk Garden *0and of all three players in *1A Phoenix Too Frequent,
C05 175 *0Miss Amanda Reeves, Miss Sonia Hughes, and \0Mr. Aart \van Bergen.
C05 176    |^The cast of the third piece, *1The Dark Lady of the Sonnets,
C05 177 *0did not reach a noticeably higher standard than that of \0Mr.
C05 178 Christopher Fry's play, yet the former, consisting of \0Mr. Gerald
C05 179 Curtis (Shakespeare), Miss Gabrielle Griffin (Queen Elizabeth *=1),
C05 180 Miss Hazel Prance and \0Mr. Gilbert Sutherland, seemed to have no
C05 181 trouble in persuading us to take Shaw's 50-year-old plea for a
C05 182 National Theatre in excellent part.
C05 183    |^The movement at the beginning when the Tudor Beefeater made the
C05 184 same damning criticism of Shakespeare's play that people were still
C05 185 making of Shaw's plays in 1910 was such a delight that we were
C05 186 prepared from then onwards to be satisfied with everything. ^But to
C05 187 accept so much help from Shaw and themselves to give so little help to
C05 188 their other two authors, Miss Enid Bagnold and \0Mr. Fry, looked like
C05 189 weakness in this student company.
C05 190 *<*4Zurich Sees Two Contrasting Versions of Dostoevsky's Crime and
C05 191 Punishment*>
C05 192 *<*2FROM OUR SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT*>
C05 193    |^*0Two stage versions of *1Raskolnikoff *0have been presented here
C05 194 in Zurich during the June Festival. ^Leopold Ahlsen's play was brought
C05 195 to the Schauspielhaus in the production of the Berlin
C05 196 Schlosspark-theater and Heinrich Sutermeister's opera is in the
C05 197 season's repertory of the Stadtheater. ^Seen here on consecutive days
C05 198 these two adaptations of Dostoevsky's novel seem as different from
C05 199 each other*- and in many ways from the book itself*- as current
C05 200 opinions on crime and punishment are sometimes at variance.
C05 201    |^\0Mr. Ahlsen's play might well have been given the alternative
C05 202 title of *"Crime and Detection**", and derives much of its dramatic
C05 203 impetus from being a good thriller. ^But it goes deeper than that,
C05 204 too. ^It is a fascinating psychological study and draws some attention
C05 205 to the political, metaphysical, religious, and moral aspects of the
C05 206 subject under discussion, namely, the taking of human life.
C05 207 *# 2027
C06   1 **[077 TEXT C06**]
C06   2 *<*4the thursday critics*>
C06   3 *<*6KENNETH ALLSOP*>
C06   4 *<*6THE NEW BOOKS*>
C06   5 *<*6BEHAN BESTOWS AN ACCOLADE ON DELANEY*>
C06   6 *<*4She's the flower in a cultural desert, he says*>
C06   7    |^*6I*2T *0is mid-morning on a Dublin Sunday. ^The streets are
C06   8 tranquilly sunny and still, for the town is at Mass. ^Most of it. ^In
C06   9 the front room of a house in Anglesey-road is a congregation who never
C06  10 actually got to church, but who are gathered with devotion around
C06  11 Brendan Behan and a brandy bottle.
C06  12    |^Where the \2bhoys are. ^In the hallway are the empties; through
C06  13 the door hearts are full, hopes are high. ^There are still a few amber
C06  14 inches in the bottle.
C06  15    |^Present are some hard-core Friends of Brendan. ^They listen with
C06  16 many an obliging guffaw to the brandy owner's solo swish on his
C06  17 anecdotal roller-coaster, with occasional stops for an old {0I.R.A.}
C06  18 air or a Connemara tear-jerker.
C06  19 *<*4Pluckily*>
C06  20    |^*6A*2LSO *0present is a London journalist who arrived two hours
C06  21 earlier by appointment to talk to the author of *1Borstal Boy *0and
C06  22 *1The Hostage *0about his new work, if any, and who is now being
C06  23 pluckily convivial to fight off the frustration.
C06  24    |^The telephone has rung a couple of times, calls from other chums
C06  25 sniffing the wind and offering to drop by for a chat.
C06  26    |^At last Brendan*- to the journalist's relief*- turns his
C06  27 attention to the writing scene. ^He proceeds to place himself in the
C06  28 literary hierarchy.
C06  29    |^*"I consider myself,**" he says, *"a cut above Evelyn Waugh
C06  30 socially, a cut above Nancy Mitford artistically, a cut above Frank
C06  31 Haxell conversationally.
C06  32    |^*"But,**" he continues, *"the greatest is Shelagh Delaney. ^Just
C06  33 because *1A Taste of Honey *0was set in Salford they put on her the
C06  34 limiting label of working-class writer. ^That's as bloody silly as
C06  35 calling a Rolls-Royce a type of transport. ^She's the flower in a
C06  36 cultural desert.
C06  37    |^*"Now, me*- I'm a journalist, I write to entertain rather than
C06  38 educate. ^And I don't write at all unless I'm exceedingly \2skint.
C06  39    |^*"But I'll say this. ^I'd like to live in America and do some
C06  40 writing there. ^It's a very free place to write in, and there's the
C06  41 advantage that no one knows what you're writing about anyway.
C06  42    |^*"Not that I did much when I was over this past two times, not
C06  43 with that great little Irish bar on Seventh Avenue, The Pigsty, always
C06  44 open. ^I was there, in even faster orbit, when that third astronaut
C06  45 went up*- what's his name? ^I'm the only man on earth who doesn't know
C06  46 what his name is. ^Don't tell me. ^I want to preserve that
C06  47 distinction.
C06  48    |^*"I already know about Shepard and that Salvation Army chap
C06  49 Gagarin*- the two biggest bores since Cardinal Newman. ^That's enough
C06  50 of all that hooey.**"
C06  51 *<*4Gravely*>
C06  52    |^*6H*2E *0plunges on into reminiscences of his trips. ^There is
C06  53 much to recall.
C06  54    |^Among other incidents he was banned from New York's \0St.
C06  55 Patrick's Day parade as a *"disorderly person.**"
C06  56    |^He was in a fight after telling a Canadian, during a chat about
C06  57 space-flight: ^*"Ireland will put a shillelagh into orbit, Israel will
C06  58 put a matzo ball into orbit, and Lichtenstein will put a postage stamp
C06  59 into orbit before you Canadians put up a mouse.**"
C06  60    |^And he suffered an alcoholic seizure and was gravely ill in
C06  61 hospital with a diabetic and heart condition.
C06  62    |^His return to Dublin was heralded by the announcement that he was
C06  63 *"off the gargle*- a retired alcoholic.**" ^Since then he has been
C06  64 heard of often in the newspapers*- three times up before the beaks for
C06  65 drunk and disorderly conduct.
C06  66 *<*4Partially*>
C06  67    |^*6L*2ESS *0has been heard of Brendan's work. ^It is now five
C06  68 years since his first play, *1The Quare Fellow, *0was produced, three
C06  69 years since *1Borstal Boy *0was published and *1The Hostage *0was put
C06  70 on.
C06  71    |^What has happened to the play, *1Richard's Cork Leg, *0begun 18
C06  72 months ago and due for presentation at the Theatre Royal, Stratford,
C06  73 last spring? ^It was never finished.
C06  74    |^What happened to the new book partially tape-recorded by his
C06  75 publishers in March of last year? ^Still a skeleton.
C06  76    |^Yet I have before me now a 12,000-word manuscript of a book
C06  77 planned to be called *1Confessions of an Irish Rebel *0which was
C06  78 delivered to his agents in June.
C06  79 *<*4Zestfully*>
C06  80    |^*6I*2T *0begins: ^*"There was a party to celebrate Deirdre's
C06  81 return from her abortion in Bristol.**" ^It is ribald, funny,
C06  82 brilliantly observant of character, and authentic as a glass of
C06  83 draught porter.
C06  84    |^But will we see its end? ^The last scene of this fragment is in a
C06  85 pub where the author throws a *+10 note on to the bar and orders a
C06  86 round for the pals, one of whom cries: ^*"Now aren't you the great
C06  87 sport, though, Brendan Behan!**"
C06  88    |^It is apparently praise that is still so important to him that he
C06  89 lets his talent drown*- for not very deep under the histrionics of
C06  90 having a zest for life must be a great fear of living.
C06  91 *<*6BOOKS IN BRIEF*>
C06  92    |^*2STEPHEN MORRIS, *4by Nevil Shute (Heinemann, 16\0s.). ^*0This
C06  93 first attempt at novel writing*- two unpublished stories from the
C06  94 '20s*- is the last work we shall see of the late Nevil Shute. ^It will
C06  95 interest devotees, but, despite the accurate flying-lore and natural
C06  96 story-telling skill, it is a creaky piece of apprenticeship.
C06  97    |^*6{0L. S.} LOWRY *4(Studio books, 21\0s.). ^*0The Painters of
C06  98 Today series issues this attractive collection of the work of perhaps
C06  99 the most fascinating artist in Britain today*- the Lancastrian who
C06 100 does those vivid crowded dream pictures of the industrial scene.
C06 101 ^There is a warm and illuminating monograph by Mervyn Levy.
C06 102    |^*6PULL MY DAISY *4(Evergreen Books, 10\0s. 6\0d.). ^*0Jack
C06 103 Kerouac's ad-libbed text for the beat film made in a Bowery flat by
C06 104 Robert Frank and Alfred Leslie, with stills of the strolling players,
C06 105 including Allen Ginsberg and Gregory Corso. ^It reads like a demented
C06 106 kind of litany*- the American free-livers doing what comes naturally,
C06 107 and with the beat between their teeth.
C06 108 *<*6EVE PERRICK*>
C06 109 *<*6THE NEW FILMS*>
C06 110 *<*5\La Lollo and the hockey girl bully-off*>
C06 111    |^*6I *2AM *0happy to report that I saw something this week I have
C06 112 never before witnessed, either in pictures or outside*- a budgerigar
C06 113 playing a drunk scene, and playing it with perfect timing and
C06 114 technique.
C06 115    |^It gives one loud, clear hiccup and falls flat on its back.
C06 116    |^This brilliant budge, I may add, gets no credit in the cast list
C06 117 of *4Come September *0(Odeon, Leicester-square), which suggests that
C06 118 it is either using a stand-in for the stunt stuff or needs a more
C06 119 pushful personal manager.
C06 120    |^The performance of our talented feathered friend is not the only
C06 121 good thing (although the one original touch) in the film, which is
C06 122 better-than-average glossy comedy, Hollywood-styled, European set.
C06 123    |^Most of it has been shot in and around the sun-terrace of the
C06 124 Hotel Splendido (renamed the Dolce Vista for the picture) in
C06 125 Portofino*- and if there's a better view to be had from a more
C06 126 comfortable vantage point anywhere, I'd like to see it.
C06 127 *<*6NIGHTIES*>
C06 128    |^*0It also parades Gina Lollobrigida in a selection of
C06 129 neglige*?2e-and-nightie ensembles not too well designed for sleeping
C06 130 in, and Rock Hudson at the wheel of a shining silver Rolls-Royce.
C06 131    |^\0Mr. Hudson is an American millionaire who spends each September
C06 132 in his Italian villa and the company of Signorina Lollobrigida.
C06 133    |^In the holiday seasonal months before and after this annual idyll
C06 134 his major-domo (Walter Slezak at his most nauseating) turns the
C06 135 palazzo into a luxury hotel.
C06 136    |^Inevitably there comes the time when \0Mr. Hudson suddenly breaks
C06 137 with tradition and arrives there in July, when, just as inevitably,
C06 138 the place is full of American teenagers on an escorted tour.
C06 139    |^Result: ^\0Mr. Hudson and lady love Lollo find themselves playing
C06 140 chaperon (Brenda \de Banzie, the official one, has broken a leg) to
C06 141 the girls, who have just been joined by a Jeep-load of boys.
C06 142    |^It's hereabouts that the budge takes to the bottle, but I don't
C06 143 think it was through boredom.
C06 144    |^The film is funny enough in places and has a line or two of
C06 145 painful home truths thrown in.
C06 146 *<*6GOODIES*>
C06 147    |^*0*"I don't want to talk like an adult,**" screams Gina, walking
C06 148 out on the man who has so far failed to make an honest woman of her.
C06 149 ^*"That's how I got into all this trouble.**"
C06 150    |^*"He's got to be 35,**" says Bobby Darin, the chief spokesman of
C06 151 the jeans-and-Jeep brigadiers as they're scheming to get rid of old
C06 152 man, solid Rock. ^*"How many hills can he take?**"
C06 153    |^Of course \0Mr. Hudson can take one more hill than the
C06 154 youngsters. ^So all ends as you know it will, with the middle-aged
C06 155 romancers respectably wed and Master Darin going steady with the
C06 156 delectable Sandra Dee (to whom, I believe, he is married in real
C06 157 life).
C06 158    |^Miss Dee, incidentally, who keeps turning up as the typical
C06 159 teenager in all the *"good girl**" parts (Tuesday Weld gets the *"bad
C06 160 girl**" ones), is becoming quite an accomplished actress.
C06 161 *<*6STUDIES*>
C06 162    |^*6T*2HE *4Marriage-Go-Round*0 (Carlton) is also a comedy of
C06 163 manners, but fun-films toting an X certificate have to keep a sharp
C06 164 look-out that the jokes about sex (what else would they joke about
C06 165 with an X?) are of the witty, verbal variety and not the visual
C06 166 slapstick.
C06 167    |^This has only one gag*- that of the entry of a gladiator (female,
C06 168 7\0ft. high, *'stacked**' and Scandinavian) into the cosy but
C06 169 unbelievably elegant household of a pair of married college
C06 170 professors.
C06 171    |^The girl is a knock-out (see picture of Julie Newmar for
C06 172 confirmation). ^She also has quite a mission in mind.
C06 173    |^She, *"younger, prettier, stronger, and more intelligent**" than
C06 174 the wife (as she soon tells her), wants to have the perfect baby. ^And
C06 175 she has chosen the husband (James Mason), who is an academic friend of
C06 176 her Nobel prize-winning father to be Big Daddy.
C06 177    |^This sort of situation calls for some subtle, slightly sardonic
C06 178 handling. ^It doesn't get it.
C06 179    |^But *1The Marriage-Go-Round *0is not entirely a waste of time. ^I
C06 180 learned from it that in the Institutes of Advanced Studies attached to
C06 181 some American universities the subject Social Psychology used to be
C06 182 called Home-making and is now known as Domestic Relations.
C06 183    |^Susan Hayward plays the wife sharply and sweetly. ^Mason is
C06 184 always good for a glower. ^And Miss Newmar is a stunner in every sense
C06 185 of the word.
C06 186    |^According to the script she was once captain of the junior hockey
C06 187 team at her school. ^So help me so was I.
C06 188 *<*6ESSAYS*>
C06 189    |^*6{IL GRIDO} *0(The Cry)*- Paris Pullman*- is an earlier essay
C06 190 in atmospheric meandering by the *1{L'Avventura} *0man, Michelangelo
C06 191 Antonioni.
C06 192    |^In it Steve Cochran, deserted by Alida Valli, roams the Pontine
C06 193 Marshes, alternately enjoying the hospitality of three lonely,
C06 194 sex-starved women, before returning home.
C06 195    |^Whereupon he climbs to the top of the tower in the sugar-beet
C06 196 refinery, suffers an unexplained attack of vertigo and falls to his
C06 197 death.
C06 198    |^Maybe this is a masterpiece, too. ^I just wouldn't know.
C06 199 *<*4the thursday critics*>
C06 200 *<*6KENNETH ALLSOP*>
C06 201 *<*4Did the electric chair fully avenge this baby's murder?*>
C06 202 *<*4Now new doubts are raised about the most notorious kidnapping of
C06 203 the century*>
C06 204    |^*6O*2N *0a March evening in 1932 in the New Jersey family
C06 205 household the nursemaid tiptoed into the baby's room to see that
C06 206 20-month-old Charles \0Jun. was sleeping.
C06 207    |^Bending over the cot, she suddenly realised that there was no
C06 208 sound of breathing. ^She thrust out her hand*- and felt emptiness.
C06 209 *<*6NATIONAL AGONY*>
C06 210    |^A *2FEW *0minutes later the father gripping a loaded rifle, told
C06 211 his wife: ^*"Anne, they have stolen our baby.**"
C06 212    |^It was not only their baby*- it was America's. ^The grief of the
C06 213 young parents became a national agony that erupted into hysteria when
C06 214 nine weeks later the child of Charles Lindbergh, hero aviator and
C06 215 golden boy, was found murdered. ^*4Kidnap, *0by George Waller (out
C06 216 today, Hamish Hamilton 30\0s.), is a painstaking, meticulous account
C06 217 of the most notorious and publicised crime of the 30's.
C06 218    |^The plain, sober manner of its style all the more tellingly
C06 219 points up not only the horror of the case itself, which floundered on
C06 220 to the electrocution four years later of a German-born Bronx carpenter
C06 221 named Bruno Richard Hauptmann, but to the raree-show emotionalism and
C06 222 sensation-hunger of that era.
C06 223 *# 2003
C07   1 **[078 TEXT C07**]
C07   2 *<*7TOULOUSE-LAUTREC AT THE TATE*>
C07   3 **[ILLUSTRATION**]
C07   4 *<*4Vigour and Decay*>
C07   5 *<By David Sylvester*>
C07   6 *<An exhibition of paintings and drawings by Toulouse-Lautrec,
C07   7 organised by the Arts Council, opened at the Tate Gallery on Friday.*>
C07   8    |^L*2AUTREC'S *0liking for whores and dancers and singers and
C07   9 acrobats as subjects was, of course, a perfectly commonplace taste
C07  10 among artists of his time. ^What is singular about his use of them is
C07  11 that no other artist, of his time or any other, has painted them so
C07  12 directly, intimately and pertinently.
C07  13    |^He doesn't, on the one hand, use them as symbols, pegs for a
C07  14 moral or aesthetic attitude, as the young Picasso does (to take one
C07  15 example among many); and on the other hand, he doesn't use them only
C07  16 for the way they look, like Degas, whose dancers are more or less
C07  17 interchangeable with his laundrywomen*- the same breed with a
C07  18 different set of gestures. ^He is concerned with them as they are and
C07  19 also for what they are.
C07  20 *<*4The artist and his obsessions*>
C07  21    |^*0This can't be explained away by his extreme personal
C07  22 involvement with them. ^Artists don't necessarily bring the deepest
C07  23 obsessions of their life into their art*- not in a direct way. ^A poet
C07  24 who is drunk doesn't necessarily write Odes to Bacchus. ^A painter who
C07  25 loves whores doesn't have to paint whores in order to express in art
C07  26 what it is in himself that makes him love them. ^He may be able to
C07  27 express this better by painting duchesses or cats or velvet-curtained
C07  28 rooms.
C07  29    |^In painting whores and entertainers, Lautrec was choosing to
C07  30 paint those whose body is their fortune. ^His own body was his
C07  31 misfortune. ^He must have felt this all the more poignantly for not
C07  32 having been a cripple from birth, but from an age, fourteen, by which
C07  33 he had acquired some relish in using his body, in riding and shooting.
C07  34    |^He must have suffered not only from knowing what a monster he was
C07  35 to look at, but also from the uselessness to himself of his distorted
C07  36 body. ^This perhaps is what gave him a fascination with bodies that
C07  37 were agile, bodies that could do what was asked of them, and bodies
C07  38 that others wanted to use.
C07  39    |^At the same time, he needed to reassure himself about his own
C07  40 deformity with his consciousness that these bodies also would in time
C07  41 become, as his had, useless and hideous and unwanted, and that they
C07  42 would become so through the very exploitation of their desirability.
C07  43    |^Lautrec's vision of his women is, I think, the outcome of some
C07  44 such ambivalence as this: on the one hand, celebration of their easy
C07  45 animal vigour and grace; on the other, celebration of the knowledge
C07  46 that they too would fall into decrepitude. ^For it is not a present
C07  47 state of decay that Lautrec presents as a rule, but only an intimation
C07  48 of decay.
C07  49 *<*4Partaking of vitality*>
C07  50    |^*0He isn't at all Swiftian about women: he doesn't, getting
C07  51 close, rejoice in recoiling from their enlarged pores. ^He paints them
C07  52 as desirable*- not glamourised, but desirable as women are in the
C07  53 flesh. ^His women are excitingly depraved, but they aren't sick, they
C07  54 are anything but sick; they convey a terrific sense of well-being.
C07  55 ^And they are drawn with a longing to share in that well-being, as if
C07  56 the painter, by transmitting to canvas the tautness and flexibility
C07  57 and plasticity of their limbs, were by this somehow partaking of their
C07  58 vitality.
C07  59    |^He is no moralist, then; he doesn't use art as a means of
C07  60 revenge. ^He is no Expressionist, inflicting (like those Central
C07  61 European artists who have borrowed from his style and iconography)
C07  62 upon the appearance of his whores an idea of their inner corruption,
C07  63 making their bodies reflect the supposed state of their souls. ^He
C07  64 paints them in all their ambiguity. ^He paints the presence of their
C07  65 beautiful vitality, the promise of their decay, the process of
C07  66 transition between them.
C07  67    |^The artist he resembles most closely in spirit is, I think,
C07  68 Watteau. ^Watteau, dangerously delicate in health, paints a world of
C07  69 pleasure in which the threat of death is as surely present as in those
C07  70 medieval images in which skeletons dance among the ladies of the
C07  71 court. ^Lautrec, misshapen and useless, paints the agile and usable
C07  72 bodies of women who are well aware that they are on the way to being
C07  73 used-up. ^The transience of youth is the common theme, and Lautrec as
C07  74 much as Watteau is a truly tragic artist in that he communicates not
C07  75 only the certainty of loss but the sense of how much there is to lose.
C07  76    |^The Arts Council show of paintings and drawings at the Tate is
C07  77 not a major exhibition. ^It consists of a selection of works from the
C07  78 Toulouse-Lautrec Museum at Albi, France, plus a score of things from
C07  79 other collections in France and England. ^The Albi contribution,
C07  80 helped by \0Mr. Jeffress's portrait of Emile Bernard, makes the
C07  81 representation of the early work as strong as could be wished: it
C07  82 shows how his art was based on a wonderfully sure grasp of form in the
C07  83 round. ^There are a number of notable drawings and sketches. ^But of
C07  84 his finest paintings there are no more than a handful.
C07  85 *<*2AT THE GALLERIES*>
C07  86 *<*4Brave New Age of Bronze*>
C07  87 *<By *6NEVILE WALLIS*>
C07  88    |^R*2ODIN'S *0ghost will not be laid. ^It is that old master's
C07  89 energy and rugged form, rather than his aspirations, which have
C07  90 influenced two of the three conspicuous sculptors this week: *4Ralph
C07  91 Brown *0(Leicester Galleries) and the American *4Jack Zajac *0(Roland,
C07  92 Browse's).
C07  93    |^Ralph Brown began as a social realist sculptor infusing
C07  94 tenderness into a gawky mother fondling a child, an infant bowling a
C07  95 hoop. ^His responsiveness to the earthy human being, often in turning
C07  96 or more lively movement, is well seen in the swing of an adolescent
C07  97 girl and in some fine figure drawings. ^But recently his sculptural
C07  98 conceptions, carried out in *1{ciment fondu} *0for bronze, have
C07  99 become more complex. ^His search now is for a metaphor for the human
C07 100 figure. ^Preserving the human attributes in out-thrust scrawny limbs
C07 101 and references to the ribbed torso, his images also resemble the
C07 102 growth of trees. ^Thus his forms have become bunched, with knobbly
C07 103 casing and clefts hard to read anatomically, and with lean stumpy
C07 104 extremities.
C07 105    |
C07 106    |^*2THIS WORKS *0well in the more fluid forms of his swimmers where
C07 107 the whole emphasis is on their gliding motion or contortions. ^It
C07 108 doesn't work, I think, in the arbitrary protrusions of the trunks of
C07 109 his humanistic standing figures. ^Henry Moore's stylisation is
C07 110 entirely consistent when one recognises that the twist of a worn
C07 111 ridged pebble has suggested the bony structure of a figure as
C07 112 timeless. ^Brown's distortions, on the other hand, seem superimposed
C07 113 on the anatomical structure of his statue of a man with a child on his
C07 114 shoulders, whose first impression of brute strength yields to a sense
C07 115 of uncertain architecture and even pretentiousness. ^The search for a
C07 116 synthesis, a metaphor for tough masculinity, continues. ^Brown is
C07 117 happiest here in recent reliefs as sensitive as the shapes of his
C07 118 swimmers surfacing.
C07 119    |^Whereas Brown gropes ambitiously and often clumsily, Jack Zajac
C07 120 seems perfectly assured. ^This young sculptor from Ohio has worked in
C07 121 Rome, and the exuberant baroque of his prancing hybrid figures is as
C07 122 clearly Italianate as his rugged porters are Rodinesque. ^Italy has
C07 123 moulded the elegance of his bronze forms, elegantly mannered even when
C07 124 the theme is as violent as a sacrificial goat trapped by a stake. ^The
C07 125 volumes and agitated silhouettes in this Easter Goat series are always
C07 126 expressive. ^The drama of imminent death reaches its climax in the
C07 127 cruciform design of the beast with rearing neck and spreadeagled legs
C07 128 against the long goad. ^One admires the inventive interplay of hard,
C07 129 tusky forms and vulnerable belly without being in the least moved by
C07 130 the torture. ^Aplomb is a cooling quality.
C07 131    |
C07 132    |^*2MORE *0mature than either, with a certainty of architectonic
C07 133 design still denied to Brown, {0F. E.} McWilliam held me longest
C07 134 with his recent bronzes sparely arranged at Waddington's galleries. ^I
C07 135 was quite unsympathetic to his earlier surrealist figures, dismembered
C07 136 and reassembled, their capriciousness masking for me the
C07 137 reflectiveness of his mind. ^From these carvings he moved on to metal
C07 138 totem figures, two of these aloof, highly wrought effigies standing
C07 139 here as a reminder of them. ^His more recent shield-like emblems or
C07 140 icons yield their dark spell without the demonstrativeness of
C07 141 Paolozzi's encrusted objects.
C07 142    |^They are deliberately frontal in aspect. ^Their intricately
C07 143 textured and symbolic relief sometimes appears positive on the front,
C07 144 negative on the back surface. ^The mood is equivocal, more capricious
C07 145 in small variations of cult objects, contemplative in his large
C07 146 bronzes. ^McWilliam may be unconscious of the distinction, for his
C07 147 appeal is to different levels of consciousness. ^A trinity of figures
C07 148 communes in the hollow of a great saucer. ^A beacon seen on the shore
C07 149 becomes transfigured into an ominous signal-cum-lookout post. ^A
C07 150 Corinthian helmet inspires an exploration of hollow form, with the
C07 151 inscrutable menace of the visor still preserved. ^His personality is
C07 152 impressed on every delphic image.
C07 153    |^How it is that Celtic mystery and individual beauty can coalesce
C07 154 in a flaky, metal shield on prongs is hard to say in simple terms. ^It
C07 155 is simplest to say that McWilliam's restless fancy has found
C07 156 fulfilment in his most satisfying sculptures to date.
C07 157 *<*4The Supremacy of Personality*>
C07 158 *<*2THE CHARACTERS OF LOVE. *1By John Bayley. (Constable. 21\0s.)*>
C07 159 *<*4By *6PHILIP TOYNBEE*>
C07 160    |^*4T*2HE *0ambiguous title reveals, by the end of this book, a
C07 161 depth of meaning. ^*"Love,**" writes \0Mr. Bayley, *"is the
C07 162 potentiality of men and women which keeps them most interested in each
C07 163 other.**" ^And later, writing of his reasons for choosing *"Troilus
C07 164 and Criseyde,**" *"Othello**" and *"The Golden Bowl**" to illustrate
C07 165 his thesis, he has this to say:-
C07 166 **[BEGIN INDENTATION**]
C07 167 **[BEGIN QUOTE**]
C07 168    |^Their achievement becomes more impressive and their status more
C07 169 clear if we realise how decisive in all of them is the idea of a
C07 170 conflict of sympathies, the kind of conflict which can only be set up
C07 171 by an opposition of characters of the old kind.
C07 172 **[END QUOTE**]
C07 173 **[END INDENTATION**]
C07 174    |^In a sense the theme of love is secondary to \0Mr. Bayley's main
C07 175 purpose, which is to vindicate his faith in *"the supremacy of
C07 176 personality in the greatest literature.**"
C07 177    |^It is a theme, of course, which is extremely familiar. ^Countless
C07 178 old Dickensian hacks have been bemoaning Pickwick and Micawber ever
C07 179 since novelists and critics first began their resolute march in a
C07 180 different direction. ^But the point about \0Mr. Bayley's book, which
C07 181 makes it, I believe, a critical work of the first importance, is that
C07 182 he is a man of great intelligence and deep reading who is very well
C07 183 aware of all the arguments which have been used against his position.
C07 184 ^He is, in the literal sense, a reactionary; and he is reacting with
C07 185 passion and intellect against some of the principal assumptions of
C07 186 modern criticism and modern fictional practice.
C07 187    |
C07 188    |^*2IT IS *0impossible to summarise the long chapters in which
C07 189 \0Mr. Bayley has investigated the chosen illustrations of his theme.
C07 190 ^I shall allow him, where possible, to speak for himself. ^Of
C07 191 Chaucer's poem and its origins he has this to say:-
C07 192 **[BEGIN INDENTATION**]
C07 193 **[BEGIN QUOTE**]
C07 194    |^All these [qualities in Boccaccio] Chaucer modifies in some way,
C07 195 throwing round them a haze of the atypical and the individual.
C07 196 ^Whereas everything in Boccaccio is hard, elegant and general, in
C07 197 Chaucer it is muted, peculiar, full of objects that are unexpected and
C07 198 yet oddly characteristic.
C07 199 **[END QUOTE**]
C07 200 **[END INDENTATION**]
C07 201    |^*"Othello,**" for \0Mr. Bayley, *"has a subtle and singular
C07 202 function, unique among Shakespeare's plays, and in its peculiar blend
C07 203 of effect reminds us ... of the novel.**" ^And against the many
C07 204 hostile critics of the play he suggests that they have adopted the
C07 205 false premise of supposing *"that the great play should be impersonal,
C07 206 that the quirks and undercurrents of individual psychology should be
C07 207 swallowed up in a grand tragic generality.**"
C07 208    |^As for *"The Golden Bowl,**" among many other personalising
C07 209 qualities which he finds in it, \0Mr. Bayley praises the novel
C07 210 because:-
C07 211 **[BEGIN INDENTATION**]
C07 212 **[BEGIN QUOTE**]
C07 213    |^Not only are the details of personal appearance and of town and
C07 214 country landscape selected with a vividness and subtlety unmatched in
C07 215 the James canon, but the physical nature of life is recorded with
C07 216 unique emphasis.
C07 217 **[MIDDLE OF QUOTE**]
C07 218 *# 2012
C08   1 **[079 TEXT C08**]
C08   2 *<*2BOOK REVIEWS*>
C08   3 *<*4Raglan's Sorry Role in the Crimea*>
C08   4 *<*7THE DESTRUCTION OF LORD RAGLAN: *5A Tragedy of the Crimean War. By
C08   5 Christopher Hibbert. (Longmans. 30\0s.)*>
C08   6 *<*4By *6RAYMOND MORTIMER*>
C08   7    |^*4T*2HERE *0never was a Crimean War: the whole story must be the
C08   8 invention of some satirist frantic with hatred for warfare and
C08   9 aristocracy. ^So at least I felt more strongly than ever when reading
C08  10 the book under review. ^Not that \0Mr. Hibbert denounces our
C08  11 Government for feebly drifting into so unnecessary a war: his account
C08  12 of its origins is restricted to three colourless pages, for he writes
C08  13 as a military historian concerned only with the conduct of the
C08  14 campaign. ^The picture that emerges is often, however, too horrid to
C08  15 seem credible.
C08  16    |^To vindicate Lord Raglan, the Commander-in-Chief, is his
C08  17 purpose*- as it was Kinglake's; but Kinglake was animated also with
C08  18 hatred of Napoleon *=3, with whose mistress he had been in love; and
C08  19 \0Mr. Hibbert is not biased by frustrated desire. ^His book seems to
C08  20 me far the most trustworthy account yet written of the Crimean
C08  21 campaign. ^It is based upon vast research into unpublished material,
C08  22 including not only the Raglan papers but hundreds of letters from
C08  23 obscure fighting men. ^He quotes also from Russian books that have not
C08  24 been translated.
C08  25 *<*4Cowardly Government*>
C08  26    |^*4T*2HE *0battles are described in great detail and illustrated
C08  27 with the usual plans*- rectangles showing troop-positions among
C08  28 vermiculated hills. ^Readers who share my distrust of such tactical
C08  29 exegesis must not skip the superb account of Inkerman with its
C08  30 hand-to-hand tussles in the fog. ^Unfortunately the author throws
C08  31 little light upon the military departments at home, which with their
C08  32 archaic incompetence and divided responsibilities were chiefly to
C08  33 blame for the suffering of the troops. ^Otherwise he has been
C08  34 admirably thorough; and the writing is lucid, correct and lively.
C08  35    |^Our exceptionally pacific Government declared war only because it
C08  36 had not the courage to resist the jingoism of the public and the
C08  37 newspapers. ^The pretext was an invasion of what is now Rumania by
C08  38 Russian troops, who were quickly expelled by the Turks with no help
C08  39 from us. ^However, having sent an army as far as Turkey, we felt
C08  40 something or other must be done with it, and the Crimean port of
C08  41 Sebastopol seemed easy to capture. ^After over a year of fighting
C08  42 captured it was, but with no lasting advantage to us or our allies.
C08  43 ^The jaunt cost the lives of over half a million men.
C08  44    |^Experienced Generals from our Indian Army were available, but
C08  45 they did not belong to the nobility: and so the commands were given to
C08  46 men who had seen active service, if at all, not less than thirty-nine
C08  47 years previously. ^Two of them suffered from feeble eyesight; one
C08  48 refused to wear spectacles. ^An officer could bring unlimited luggage,
C08  49 his wife, his French cook, and a yacht to live in; there were not even
C08  50 tents for the men, and what little equipment they were given was for
C08  51 the most part shoddy, boots that fell to pieces, swords so soft that
C08  52 they would bend instead of cutting.
C08  53 *<*4Rotting Cargoes*>
C08  54    |^*4T*2HOUGH *0we boasted far the largest navy and mercantile
C08  55 marine in the world, these could not bring enough supplies for our
C08  56 expeditionary force; and cargoes moreover were allowed to rot
C08  57 unloaded. ^The two admirals were at odds with one another. ^The
C08  58 commissioners in charge of supplies, when asked for a few nails,
C08  59 refused to issue less than a ton. ^Half-starved and unprotected
C08  60 against the Russian winter, our troops died in their thousands: lack
C08  61 of fodder killed the horses and mules; there was no other transport.
C08  62 ^The {0C.O.} of the Grenadiers would not allow a mere line regiment
C08  63 to fight on the flank of his beautiful Guardsmen, who were therefore
C08  64 compelled to retreat in disorder.
C08  65    |^Officers like Lord Cardigan and Lord George Paget found the war
C08  66 so disagreeable that they returned to England in a huff. ^Of course
C08  67 no such escape was possible for the men, who at first fought with
C08  68 staggering courage. ^Gradually those who survived grew bitter; the
C08  69 reinforcements were for the most part raw recruits; morale collapsed.
C08  70 ^In the final action at Sebastopol our troops refused the order to
C08  71 advance; and the fortress was taken by the French, who throughout the
C08  72 campaign had been better equipped, better fed and better led.
C08  73    |^Worn out by his labours, insulted in Parliament and by the Press,
C08  74 no longer supported by his Queen, Raglan had died three months
C08  75 previously. ^A wiser man would not have accepted the command at the
C08  76 age of sixty-five after forty years of sitting at a desk. ^He did
C08  77 accept it, not from conceit but from a sense of duty. ^No one could
C08  78 have been more courageous, more hard-working, more fair-minded, more
C08  79 amiable. ^He behaved to the French with exemplary and invaluable
C08  80 patience. ^But then he proved equally patient with the military
C08  81 departments at home that were murdering his troops. ^He could not bear
C08  82 to say an unkind word to anyone.
C08  83 *<*4Creature of Habit*>
C08  84    |^*4W*2E *0cannot refuse him our pity. ^He worked himself to death
C08  85 at a Herculean task for which he was fitted by neither character nor
C08  86 experience. ^We must remember at the same time that he had been for
C08  87 the previous twenty-eight years Secretary at the Horse Guards
C08  88 apparently without attempting any reform in the administration of the
C08  89 Army. ^He was described by Palmerston as *"a creature of habit**"; and
C08  90 in the Crimea he found himself a victim of the grotesque system he had
C08  91 helped to maintain. ^The conservative who dislikes changes even when
C08  92 they are improvements may, like Raglan, be a good man. ^He cannot be a
C08  93 good Commander-in-Chief.
C08  94 *<*6IRON DUKE ON PAPER*>
C08  95 *<*6WELLINGTON AT WAR. *5Letters selected and edited by Anthony
C08  96 Brett-James. (Macmillan. 42\0s.)*>
C08  97 *<*4By *6SIR ARTHUR BRYANT*>
C08  98    |^*4N*2OT *0even \0Dr. Johnson could hit a verbal nail on the head
C08  99 more effectively than the Duke of Wellington. ^He once said that there
C08 100 was nothing in life like a clear definition, and during his years of
C08 101 command he was incessantly engaged in defining things clearly. ^It was
C08 102 one of the qualities that made him so great a commander; as with
C08 103 Field-Marshal Montgomery it was almost impossible to mistake his
C08 104 meaning, however unpalatable. ^As the human capacity for getting the
C08 105 wrong end of the stick, especially in the fog and confusion of war, is
C08 106 almost infinite, this quality is an essential part of the military
C08 107 art.
C08 108    |^If good writing be the art of conveying meaning with the greatest
C08 109 possible force in the fewest possible words*- and I can think of no
C08 110 better definition*- Wellington was a very good writer. ^His military
C08 111 correspondence, like his recorded conversation, is delightful reading.
C08 112    |
C08 113    |^*4*"I*2T *0is not very agreeable to anybody,**" he reminded a
C08 114 complaining Portuguese magnate, *"to have strangers quartered in his
C08 115 house; nor is it very agreeable to us strangers, who have good houses
C08 116 in our own country, to be obliged to seek for quarters here. ^We are
C08 117 not here for our pleasure; the situation of your country renders it
C08 118 necessary.**" ^Could anything be neater?
C08 119    |^Or anything more true than this? ^*"Half the business of the
C08 120 world, particularly that of our country, is done by accommodation and
C08 121 by the parties understanding each other.**"
C08 122    |^Or this, quoted by \0Mr. Brett-James in his admirable
C08 123 introduction*- ^*"I do not know how \0Mr. . . . has discovered that my
C08 124 channels of intelligence are of doubtful fidelity. ^I should find it
C08 125 very difficult to point out what channels of intelligence I have: but
C08 126 probably \0Mr. . . . knows.**"
C08 127    |
C08 128    |^*4\0M*2R. BRETT-JAMES *0has done modern readers*- who turn to the
C08 129 great classics of our past too little*- a service by producing a new
C08 130 selection from Wellington's letters. ^Most of them are taken from
C08 131 twelve volumes and two and a half million words of Colonel Gurwood's
C08 132 *"Dispatches of the Duke of Wellington**" and from the fifteen volumes
C08 133 of the Duke's *"Supplementary Dispatches.**"
C08 134    |^I will not say that no better selection could have been made;
C08 135 \0Mr. Brett-James's book does not compare, for instance, with the much
C08 136 fuller selection made by Colonel Gurwood himself and published in
C08 137 early Victorian days in a single volume of nearly a thousand pages.
C08 138 ^In deference to the reading tastes of our day \0Mr. Brett-James's
C08 139 compass is far smaller.
C08 140    |^The truth is that at least a dozen selections of equal size,
C08 141 equally good and equally representative, could have been made from the
C08 142 same source. ^What matters is that the editor has given us the essence
C08 143 of Wellington's genius*- his clarity, his good sense, his powers of
C08 144 observation, his understanding of human nature, his dry irony, his
C08 145 wonderful balance and foresight. ^It is like offering the reader a
C08 146 small parcel of a superb cellar; it is all there for his buying if he
C08 147 wants more.
C08 148    |^I cannot help adding one sample of Wellington's style. ^He had
C08 149 been approached about the return to England of a major whose fiance*?2e
C08 150 was pining in his absence.
C08 151 **[BEGIN INDENTATION**]
C08 152    |^*"I cannot say that I have ever known of a young lady dying of
C08 153 love. ^They contrive, in some manner, to live and look tolerably well,
C08 154 notwithstanding their despair and the continued absence of their
C08 155 lover; and some even have been known to recover so far as to be
C08 156 inclined to take another lover, if the absence of the first has lasted
C08 157 too long. ^I don't suppose that your *1\6prote*?2ge*?2e *0can ever
C08 158 recover so far, but I do hope that she will survive the continued
C08 159 necessary absence of the Major, and enjoy with him here-after many
C08 160 happy days.**"
C08 161 **[END INDENTATION**]
C08 162 *<*7ADVICE FOR A LADY IN LOVE*>
C08 163 *<*7TO A YOUNG ACTRESS: *5The Letters of Bernard Shaw to Molly
C08 164 Tompkins. (Constable. 63\0s.)*>
C08 165 *<*4By *6HESKETH PEARSON*>
C08 166    |^*4F*2OR *0sheer entertainment and humorous common sense the
C08 167 letters and criticisms of Bernard Shaw are unrivalled. ^Much of their
C08 168 scintillation and gaiety is due to his emotional detachment from life,
C08 169 and his peculiar genius derives from the fact that, being removed from
C08 170 the complicated agitations of ordinary human beings, he could observe
C08 171 with cool clarity the actions resulting from their temperamental
C08 172 disturbances.
C08 173    |^This oddity in his nature appears again and again in his letters
C08 174 to women, who fell in love with him and had to be coaxed out of their
C08 175 enraptured condition. ^One of them, a young actress named Molly
C08 176 Tompkins, arrived in England from America with her husband and small
C08 177 son, for the sole purpose of meeting the prophet Shaw, who sent her
C08 178 well over a hundred letters and post-cards between 1921 and his death.
C08 179    |
C08 180    |^*"*4I*2S *0it not delightful, to be in love?**" he wrote to her;
C08 181 *"it has happened to me twice. ^It does not last, because it does not
C08 182 belong to this earth; and when you clasp the idol it turns out to be a
C08 183 rag doll like yourself; for the immortal part *1must *0elude you if
C08 184 you grab at it.**" ^But while he was content with dreams of fair
C08 185 women, they were looking for something more corporeal, which he could
C08 186 only supply by giving them excellent advice on how to order their
C08 187 lives.
C08 188    |
C08 189    |^*4I*2N *0this handsome volume many of his letters to Molly
C08 190 Tompkins are reproduced in photostat. ^With a few alterations carbon
C08 191 copies could have been sent to any of his adoring female
C08 192 correspondents without surprising them. ^They contain advice on such
C08 193 matters as the disadvantage of an actress using make-up off the stage
C08 194 and the advantage of using it when interviewing managers, on the
C08 195 correct pronunciation of words, on how to behave as a mother and the
C08 196 proper way to bring up a son, on the process of buying white oxen in
C08 197 Italy, on the necessity in England of putting *"\0Esq.**" not
C08 198 *"\0Mr.**" on envelopes addressed to men, on how to catch a bat, and
C08 199 on the expediency of keeping a parrot instead of a dog: ^*"Parrots are
C08 200 amusing, and never die. ^You wish they did.**"
C08 201    |^Frequently in these letters his intuition or observation is
C08 202 crystallised in a phrase, {0e.g.}, ~*"Learning to live is like
C08 203 learning to skate: you begin by making a ridiculous spectacle of
C08 204 yourself,**" and ~*"The fear of God may be the beginning of wisdom,
C08 205 but the fear of Man is the beginning of murder,**" and ~*"It is
C08 206 useless to try to help people whom God does not mean to be helped.**"
C08 207 *# 2025
C09   1 **[080 TEXT C09**]
C09   2 *<*7FICTION*>
C09   3 *<*4Keeping The Beasts In Their Place*>
C09   4 *<*4By *6NIGEL DENNIS*>
C09   5 *<*2ANGUS WILSON, *4The Old Men at the Zoo. *0Secker & Warburg, 18\0s.*>
C09   6    |^*"*4O*2UR *0island, it would appear, is too small to allow even
C09   7 for the controlled return of the wolf, the bear and the boar.**"
C09   8    |^So says the Times*- or rather, Angus Wilson makes the Times say
C09   9 so in his new novel, which is set in London in 1970. ^There is no
C09  10 reason to doubt that his sober, careful verdict on the danger of
C09  11 *"open**" Zoos catches exactly the tone of the Times of 1970; but we
C09  12 are left worrying about \0Mr. Wilson himself. ^He has written the
C09  13 future *"editorial.**" ^He has written the present novel. ^Are they at
C09  14 odds with one another?
C09  15    |^The matter is mentioned because the puzzle of \0Mr. Wilson's new
C09  16 novel is to know clearly what he is saying and where he is standing.
C09  17 ^This was never a problem in \0Mr. Wilson's early days. ^His first
C09  18 books of short stories were as clear as only crystals of poison can
C09  19 be, and the horrors he held up to our inspection were almost too
C09  20 recognisable to be faced.
C09  21    |^But, since then, \0Mr. Wilson has widened both his medium and his
C09  22 heart. ^He writes big novels now and expresses his griefs and pains
C09  23 quite openly; he still has plenty of poison, but he doles it out with
C09  24 a more distressed hand*- in brief, he is no longer a pure satirist.
C09  25    |^One may mourn the change, but one has no right to condemn it. ^An
C09  26 author should be allowed to change as he pleases: the only test is the
C09  27 quality of the result.
C09  28    |^*4The Old Men at the Zoo *0has much to commend it. ^It has been
C09  29 written with great feeling and it has some very enjoyable characters
C09  30 in it. ^It is also a very just book, in that the most absurd
C09  31 characters are allowed their virtues and dignities. ^Even when it is
C09  32 cross, angry and spiteful, it is still a kindly book.
C09  33    |^The difficulty is to know exactly how to find one's way about in
C09  34 it. ^The title suggests that it is about the English masses (who are
C09  35 *"the Zoo**") and those who govern them (who are *"the old men**").
C09  36 ^If this is correct, then much of \0Mr. Wilson's symbolism becomes
C09  37 easy to follow. ^We see clearly that if the Zoo is to be decently
C09  38 conducted, those who govern it must do so unselfishly, intelligently
C09  39 and civilisedly.
C09  40    |
C09  41    |^They must also realise that animals are tricky, even dangerous,
C09  42 beasts, and must not feel sentimental about tarantulas and lynxes.
C09  43    |^The chiefs of \0Mr. Wilson's Zoo lack most of these
C09  44 qualifications. ^Some of them are idealists*- in the sense that they
C09  45 are more obsessed with theories and dreams about animals than they are
C09  46 with actual, living animals. ^Others of them love only those aspects
C09  47 of the animal that suit their professional interests*- an extreme (and
C09  48 witty) example is the Zoo pathologist, who loves animals most when
C09  49 they are dead, dissection being his forte.
C09  50    |^These persons, let us say, are the department chiefs and top
C09  51 bureaucrats of our society*- and under them are the *"keepers**" and
C09  52 *"assistant-keepers**" who carry out their orders. ^But above them all
C09  53 are the Secretary and the Director*- men of nearly equal power who
C09  54 frame Zoo policy and fight over what this policy should be; these two
C09  55 we may call Prime Minister and Leader of the Opposition.
C09  56    |^The clash of policy in \0Mr. Wilson's novel is over the Zoo of
C09  57 the future. ^The Director hates Regent's Park: he believes that
C09  58 animals must be given *"limited liberty**" and allowed to roam in
C09  59 Whipsnadian reserves. ^The Secretary thinks this is nonsense.
C09  60 ^Animals, he insists, are best off in the cosy, though somewhat
C09  61 cramped, cages designed for them by the great Victorian, Decimus
C09  62 Burton.
C09  63    |^All this is most prettily done. ^\0Mr. Wilson's descriptions of
C09  64 animals are first-rate*- particularly as he is most honest about them,
C09  65 never pretending for a moment that some of them are extremely ugly.
C09  66 ^And the problems these animals present are perfectly genuine ones:
C09  67 should *"the wolf, the bear and the boar**" be allowed considerable
C09  68 liberty, or is the Times right in concluding that they are too
C09  69 dangerous to enjoy such privileges?
C09  70    |^This problem becomes acutely personal to every reader when a
C09  71 liberated wolf eats the Director's daughter. ^Thousands of innocent
C09  72 animals have to pay for the wolf's indiscretion by being shut up in
C09  73 Regent's Park again. ^Is this fair?
C09  74    |^\0Mr. Wilson does not say whether it is fair or not. ^And by the
C09  75 end of the book we realise that the puzzles and hypotheses which he
C09  76 presents are honest expressions of his own uncertainty. ^His intention
C09  77 is not to provide closed answers, but to proffer dozens of open
C09  78 questions.
C09  79    |
C09  80    |^This is unusual and stimulating in theory, but tending to
C09  81 confusion in practice. ^\0Mr. Wilson's novel, one feels, would have
C09  82 been remarkably good if he had stuck strictly to the Zoo. ^Instead, he
C09  83 has filled out his canvas of the future with a war in which England is
C09  84 invaded and crushed by combined European armies (Russia and America
C09  85 agree not to intervene). ^He has put in saboteurs, and spies, and
C09  86 politicians, and resistance movements*- and by the time he has done he
C09  87 has put in more matter than he can handle and made an artistic clutter
C09  88 of his humane worries.
C09  89    |^His novel is still a good one*- but the careful, precise pen of
C09  90 the former short-story writer could have made his parable shorter,
C09  91 clearer and far more brilliant.
C09  92 *<*4People On The Move*>
C09  93 *<*4By *6ANTHONY QUINTON*>
C09  94 *<*2ALASDAIR CLAYRE, *4The Window, *0Cape, 16\0s.*>
C09  95 *<*2IVY COMPTON-BURNETT, *4The Mighty and their Fall, *0Gollancz,
C09  96 16\0s.*>
C09  97 *<*2HOWARD SPRING, *4I Met a Lady, *0Collins, 21\0s.*>
C09  98 *<*2*"{0H. D.}**", *4Bid Me to Live, *0Grove Press, 25\0s.*>
C09  99    |^*4F*2OR *0topicality, Alasdair Clayre's first novel *4The Window
C09 100 *0would stand out emphatically enough at any time beside this week's
C09 101 other books; in the present condition of the world it is almost too
C09 102 much.
C09 103    |^The central figures are a decent, devout, inarticulate organist
C09 104 in a poor district of Portsmouth, his frigid, respectable wife and
C09 105 their sons, Peter, a trumpet-playing factory worker, and Matthew, a
C09 106 pretty batman whose ambition is to be a butler.
C09 107    |^Also involved are the step-children of the vicarage: James, an
C09 108 elaborately cerebral philosopher, and Anna, a bemused, sensitive
C09 109 pianist. ^The organist, Matthew and James get caught up, in different
C09 110 ways and with fatal consequences for one of them, in the Easter March
C09 111 of an idealistic organisation.
C09 112    |
C09 113    |^The narrative is developed with great skill and efficiency, the
C09 114 point of view shifting from one of the main characters to another. ^In
C09 115 its course \0Mr. Clayre conducts his readers on a convincingly
C09 116 authoritative tour of a wide variety of pre-eminently contemporary
C09 117 scenes: an assembly-line, an officers' mess, a jazz club, a left-wing
C09 118 coffee-bar, a deb dance, as well as the March itself.
C09 119    |^It is an impressively copious image of our society, but its
C09 120 realism has the thinness of a cross-section. ^The Sands family are not
C09 121 very plausible as a group; even the accelerated social mobility of our
C09 122 time could hardly accommodate a son like Peter in such a family.
C09 123    |^James is an Englishman's idea of a young Frenchman, and Matthew
C09 124 seems to have been transferred from one of Simon Raven's amazing
C09 125 regiments. ^There is a fairly sharp line between these and the
C09 126 characters \0Mr. Clayre likes, the organist and Anna for example, who
C09 127 are honoured with a less rigid and political treatment. ^But this is
C09 128 an able and intelligent book whose limitations reflect the magnitude
C09 129 of its ambitions.
C09 130    |^*4The Mighty and their Fall *0is absolutely standard Ivy
C09 131 Compton-Burnett, another elegant construction in moral geometry,
C09 132 another variation on her insulated domestic theme with its normal
C09 133 elements of dubious paternity, hidden wills, a despised governess,
C09 134 gnomic servants and Hobbesian toddlers.
C09 135    |^Experts could no doubt identify most of the characters and
C09 136 situations with those of earlier books and even the less initiated can
C09 137 see that this one involves no striking new departures. ^Miss
C09 138 Compton-Burnett's curious instrument grates on some ears, but for
C09 139 those who can stand it there is more to be got from it than the
C09 140 incidental felicities to be discovered by brief dippings. ^Her books
C09 141 should be read at a sitting if possible, since the plot and characters
C09 142 are only revealed by the cumulative effect of the dialogue.
C09 143    |^The centre of this novel is the struggle between a widowed father
C09 144 and his eldest daughter who both resort to deceit, she to prevent his
C09 145 second marriage, he to prevent her inheriting his brother's money. ^He
C09 146 has a more impersonal justification in his concern for the continuing
C09 147 welfare of the estate but it gives his response to exposure a more
C09 148 blatant and so more discreditable quality.
C09 149    |^Miss Compton-Burnett's vertiginous economies both of technique
C09 150 and material have a charm of their own and there is a fascination in
C09 151 what she manages to do with what is left; but they also reflect, as
C09 152 much as Racine's, a judgment of importance, of what really matters in
C09 153 the relations of human beings.
C09 154    |
C09 155    |^Howard Spring's *4I Met a Lady *0is, predictably and honourably,
C09 156 a thoroughly good read*- the whole quarter of a million words of it.
C09 157 ^A rambling, loose-jointed affair, it seems to be the result of
C09 158 throwing a few human types together at random to see what would come
C09 159 out.
C09 160    |^The hero escapes from Manchester and cotton with an inheritance
C09 161 that allows him to indulge his pronounced negative capability as a
C09 162 writer of little essays. ^After a good deal of dithering he marries a
C09 163 nice rich actress and what with her connections and the family of a
C09 164 tycoon who unaccountably becomes his friend he has plenty to look in
C09 165 upon and make harmlessly facetious remarks about. ^It is a
C09 166 pleasant-spirited, old-fashioned book and pretends to do no more than
C09 167 tell an only mildly engrossing story.
C09 168    |^*"{0H. D.}**"'s *4Bid Me to Live, *0a small, handsomely-produced
C09 169 volume, is described as *"a madrigal of war-time love and death in the
C09 170 London of 1917.**" ^It recounts in short, hectic and often verbless
C09 171 sentences the inner life of Julia Ashton, a sensitive American married
C09 172 to Rafe, who spends his leaves in the bed of the girl upstairs. ^Julia
C09 173 wrongly thinks that Frederick, a red-bearded author of *"scandalous,
C09 174 volcanic novels**" married to an ample German aristocrat, is in love
C09 175 with her.
C09 176    |^The *1\6clef *0of this *1\6roman *0is ready to hand, and it bears
C09 177 the imprint not, as the blurb says, of major literature, but of a
C09 178 major *1\6litte*?2rateur. ^*0In its undisciplined artiness it is of a
C09 179 piece with the odd, vanished world it obliquely describes.
C09 180 *<*7IN BRIEF*>
C09 181 *<*5By *7FELICIA LAMB*>
C09 182 *<*5By The Danube*>
C09 183    |^*4Family Jewels *2BY PETRU DUMITRIU, *0Collins, 21\0s. ^First
C09 184 part of mighty trilogy about peasants revolting against landed gentry
C09 185 in late 19th- and early 20th-century Rumania. ^Formidable amassing of
C09 186 detail gives interesting picture of Bucharest and Danube plain life.
C09 187 ^All gentry characters unpleasant, all peasant ones unattractive, but
C09 188 the whole enjoyable once difficult beginning surmounted.
C09 189    |^*4A Man on the Roof *2BY KATHLEEN SULLY, *0Peter Davies, 15\0s.
C09 190 ^Two sprightly elderly ladies try to escape ghost of husband of one of
C09 191 them and recapture youth and freedom in their flight. ^Charming
C09 192 fantasy told with perfect light touch. ^Delightful surprise ending.
C09 193    |^*4The Silent Speaker *2BY NOEL STREATFEILD, **[SIC**] *0Collins,
C09 194 16\0s. ^Neatly-constructed whydunit. ^Members of unexpected suicide's
C09 195 last carefree dinner party all dig into her apparently blameless past.
C09 196 ^Skilful maintenance of suspense right up to not-too-unlikely
C09 197 solution. ^Modern rich Londoners well observed.
C09 198    |^*4Every Night and All *2BY WILLIAM MILLER, *0Blond, 16\0s. ^Young
C09 199 Glaswegian on the run from his native slums finds London can mean
C09 200 luxury*- at an unpleasant price. ^Convincing Glasgow beginning tails
C09 201 off into forced, happy, socialistic ending, excusable from 27-year-old
C09 202 author. ^Bad characters good, good characters bad.
C09 203    |^*4Children in Love *2BY MOIRA VERSCHOYLE, *0Hodder, 15\0s.
C09 204 ^Glamorous worldly-wise 17-year-old disrupts backwoods Anglo-Irish
C09 205 family and turns perfect boy-and-girl friendship into unhappy
C09 206 adolescent triangle. ^Tragic ending to a golden summer in well-evoked
C09 207 Irish Far West. ^Perfect companion to a box of chocolates.
C09 208    |^*4The Slap *2BY MARION FRIEDMANN, *0Longmans, 15\0s. ^Grim
C09 209 exploration situation in small South African country town.
C09 210 *# 2010
C10   1 **[081 TEXT C10**]
C10   2 *<*6THE WORLD OF MUSIC*>
C10   3 *<*4A Drastic Way with Verdi*>
C10   4 *<By *6DESMOND SHAWE-TAYLOR*>
C10   5    |^*4T*2HE *0score of *"Falstaff**" seems to have ripened against a
C10   6 warm orchard wall. ^It is all juice and goodness, firm flesh and sweet
C10   7 tang: at once earthy and heavenly, mellow and zestful, old and young.
C10   8 ^This is one of music's miracles; and the miracle was achieved by
C10   9 Boito's cunning and Verdi's genius upon the basis of an effective but
C10  10 prosaic Shakespearean farce.
C10  11    |^Franco Zeffirelli's new production, unveiled at Covent Garden
C10  12 last Wednesday, was eagerly awaited after his romantic *"Lucia**" and
C10  13 his wonderfully brilliant *"Cav**" and *"Pag**" at the same house*-
C10  14 not to mention his more controversial *"Romeo and Juliet**" at the Old
C10  15 Vic. ^His *"Falstaff,**" though likely to prove a hit, is again
C10  16 controversial. ^Visually, it is inventive and often lovely.
C10  17 ^Dramatically, it is a hotchpotch: imaginative, eccentric, frequently
C10  18 crude.
C10  19    |
C10  20    |^*4T*2HE *0worst comes near the beginning. ^If you can accept the
C10  21 short opening scene between Falstaff and his followers, the evening
C10  22 has no further terrors for you. ^The style here is that of the Crazy
C10  23 Gang, though without their sublime impudence; for if \0Messrs.
C10  24 Naughton and Gold had played Pistol and Bardolph, they would at least
C10  25 have stormed the Royal Box and tried on a tiara. ^Michael Langdon and
C10  26 Robert Bowman could only rampage and roister around the stage, though
C10  27 *"only**" is a poor word, for they achieved a good deal. ^For
C10  28 instance, Geraint Evans's admirable delivery of the Honour tirade was
C10  29 effectively diminished when to each one of Falstaff's rhetorical
C10  30 questions Bardolph, from beneath a table or halfway up the stairs,
C10  31 insisted on nodding a tireless and zany affirmative.
C10  32    |^Thence to Ford's garden, a sort of inn courtyard: striking.
C10  33 ^Enter two letter-carrying Wives (Mariella Angioletti and Josephine
C10  34 Veasey), a Dutch-doll Nannetta (Mirella Freni) and... but who is this,
C10  35 sweeping in, last and grandest, like a beruffed Lady Bracknell, with
C10  36 parasol at the slope and lorgnettes at the ready? ^Can it be our old
C10  37 friend \0Mrs. Quickly, servant to \0Dr. Caius and Eastcheap hostess?
C10  38 ^Of course, she runs the entire show; the only surprise is that she
C10  39 didn't get a letter too. ^If so wild a misinterpretation can be
C10  40 tolerated, she is capitally sung and played by the exuberant Regina
C10  41 Resnik.
C10  42    |^That \0Mrs. Ford hardly got a look in was to some extent the
C10  43 fault of Signora Angioletti, who on the first night continually
C10  44 allowed her phrases to vanish in mid-utterance as though the current
C10  45 had been cut off. ^The explanation can hardly be a failure of voice,
C10  46 for a few bars later all was well again; I fear it must have been Art.
C10  47    |
C10  48    |^*4I*2N *0the second act things began to improve, although \0Mrs.
C10  49 Quickly's famous deep curtseys on the word *"\Reverenza!**" were
C10  50 turned into nonsense by having to be executed on a staircase. ^Best of
C10  51 all was the great scene between Ford and Falstaff, where no misplaced
C10  52 ingenuity was allowed to impair our pleasure in the excellent singing
C10  53 of John Shaw and \0Mr. Evans and in the brilliant and zestful playing
C10  54 of the orchestra under Signor Giulini. ^The orchestra was throughout
C10  55 in splendid form; particularly at the quiet end of Act *=3, Scene 1,
C10  56 where the empty stage and darkening sky, the calling of the distant
C10  57 voices, the magical chain of descending harmonies and the slowly
C10  58 closing curtains were combined by producer and conductor into an
C10  59 exquisite theatrical unity.
C10  60    |^The tapestried interior of Ford's house made a delightful
C10  61 spectacle, and the final scene opened in a vein of high romance, with
C10  62 pale shafts of moonlight striking across the forest glade; but on the
C10  63 arrival of the fairies Herne's Oak split asunder and soared aloft,
C10  64 never to be seen again. ^We found ourselves back in the inn
C10  65 courtyard*- but a courtyard transformed into such a dream-pageant as
C10  66 might have been conjured up by a Chagall given unlimited funds to
C10  67 stage a party for \0Mr. Bestegui or \0Mr. Onassis.
C10  68    |^Somewhere in the course of all this*- the clowning and the
C10  69 prettiness, the slapstick and whimsy and phantasmagoria*- Verdi's
C10  70 simplicity and honesty have fallen by the wayside. ^But the
C10  71 compensations are great, especially on the musical side*- and I fear
C10  72 it is the kind of showy production that makes such a phrase seem
C10  73 natural. ^Great pleasure is given by Luigi Alva and Signora Freni as
C10  74 the young lovers. ^Signor Giulini excels in the purely lyrical music,
C10  75 and the details are always handled with loving care; where breadth and
C10  76 robustness are demanded he is sometimes less happy. ^\0Mr. Evans
C10  77 continues to ripen and improve his distinguished Falstaff, but we
C10  78 cannot expect to see this impersonation at its best until it figures
C10  79 within a less confusing framework.
C10  80    |
C10  81    |^*4T*2HE *0Welsh National Opera Company began an enterprising week
C10  82 of opera at Sadler's Wells with two much earlier Verdi operas: the
C10  83 *"Nabucco**" of 1842 and *"{La Battaglia di Legnano}**" of 1849.
C10  84 ^Both were accompanied by the Bournemouth Orchestra and conducted by
C10  85 Charles Groves with no very marked feeling for the appropriate style.
C10  86 ^*"Nabucco**" was in all essentials the production that has been seen
C10  87 in London twice before, but it is now distinguished by a new Abigail
C10  88 (Elizabeth Vaughan) who tackled her very difficult music with
C10  89 remarkable aplomb and accuracy, if she can enrich her timbre she might
C10  90 go far. ^Both operas are full of stirring choral scenes, sung
C10  91 vigorously but with a faulty sense of legato by the Welsh choir.
C10  92    |^Drastic treatment was again meted out to Verdi in *"{La
C10  93 Battaglia di Legnano,}**" which lost all connection with what the
C10  94 Press statement called *"a rather dated incident in the 12th
C10  95 century**" and was lugged forward into modern times by John Moody, to
C10  96 become an episode of the Italian Resistance during the German
C10  97 occupation. ^Modern diction and ways of thought were, however, not
C10  98 consistently adopted. ^In one of Verdi's furious cabalettas (husband
C10  99 discovering wife's supposed infidelity) ~*"{Trema! trema! coppia
C10 100 esecrata!}**" became ~*"Damn you! damn you! pair of dirty liars!**";
C10 101 but when the wife popped a compromising letter into her *"bosom**"
C10 102 (standard post-box for operatic missives), it instantly *"stung her
C10 103 like a serpent.**"
C10 104    |^Notwithstanding such quaint distractions, the power and the
C10 105 beauty of Verdi's invention in the last two acts could be perceived.
C10 106 ^The best singing came from Heather Harper.
C10 107    |^The Welsh Opera continues to deserve our gratitude, but could
C10 108 learn much in the way of vocal style from a surprisingly vocal
C10 109 performance of Rossini's *"Otello**" by the Philopera Circle at \0St.
C10 110 Pancras on Friday, about which I hope to add a word or two next week.
C10 111 *<*6WELSH NIGHT*>
C10 112    |^*4Between *0them, Cardiff and \0St. Pancras ensure that not a
C10 113 note written by Verdi remains unheard in London. ^Meanwhile, thanks to
C10 114 the Welsh National Opera Company for bringing, if only for a single
C10 115 May night, another Rimsky-Korsakov opera to Sadler's Wells, a theatre
C10 116 which knew *"Snow Maiden**" and *"Tsar Saltan**" in pre-war days.
C10 117    |^*"May Night,**" a folksy precursor of the more sophisticated
C10 118 orientalisms of *"Sadko**" and *"The Golden Cockerel,**" proved a
C10 119 happy choice, with the pleasing voices of John Wakefield (Levko), Iona
C10 120 Jones (Anna) and Heather Harper (Queen of the Roussalki) well-suited
C10 121 to its melodic grace. ^The male topers, too, Harold Blackburn, Laurie
C10 122 Payne and Stephen Manton, entered into the spirit of the piece, but
C10 123 not Phyllis Ash Child's completely un-shrewish Sister-in-law.
C10 124    |^Sally Hulke's sets and John Moody's production, like the chorus,
C10 125 provided more acceptable contributions than the Bournemouth Symphony
C10 126 Orchestra, whose neat rhythmic response to Charles Makerras's
C10 127 conducting was too often wide of the mark in pitch.
C10 128    |^Boito's *"Mefistofele**" remains the Company's most imaginative
C10 129 production. ^Triumphing ingeniously over space, it depicts Heaven and
C10 130 a Witches' Sabbath as successfully as Faust's study. ^Raimund Herinex
C10 131 has, again, the right voice and manner for the Prince of Evil, but
C10 132 rejuvenation brings Tano Ferendino's Faust no increased vocal
C10 133 confidence. ^Under Warwick Braithwaite the orchestra recovered pitch,
C10 134 while sagging intonation crossed the footlights, weighing heavier on
C10 135 the angelic chorus of the Prologue than their golden wings.
C10 136    |^*6{0F. A.}
C10 137 *<*6BALLET*>
C10 138 *<*4By *6RICHARD BUCKLE*>
C10 139 *<*4What Every Guru Knows*>
C10 140    |^O*2N *0Wednesday night, when my pampered colleagues were borne in
C10 141 their capacious palanquins either to*- Zeffirelli's (Verdi's
C10 142 [Shakespeare's])*- *"Falstaff**" or to see those onychophorous
C10 143 ootocoids at the Fortune, this Cinderella among critics made his way
C10 144 alone and on foot to watch Indian dancing at La Scala in Charlotte
C10 145 Street.
C10 146    |
C10 147    |^*4N*2OW, *0though I would not go as far as to agree with the
C10 148 programme that the technique of Kamala, the eldest of the three
C10 149 sisters performing, *"is in the \5enveable position of being above
C10 150 controversy,**" she has learnt some of Bharata Natya and she gets by.
C10 151 ^Radha and Vasanti are graceful, too. ^It is how their brother \0Mr.
C10 152 Kumar got on stage that beats me*- unless, of course, he is really
C10 153 Peter Sellers. ^From his performance, I guessed that, watching his kid
C10 154 sisters perfecting themselves in their art, he suddenly couldn't bear
C10 155 not to be in on it too, and finally forbade them to appear without
C10 156 him. ^There can be no doubt that, like Romeo Coates, he believes
C10 157 utterly in his mission. ^*"Dance inspires him ceaselessly to strive
C10 158 higher and higher towards the shining pinnacle of perfection that is
C10 159 the goal of every Artiste.**"
C10 160    |^Kathak, with its swift spins, is what bedizened boys used to
C10 161 dance before Mogul Emperors. ^\0Mr. Kumar rashly did it stripped to
C10 162 the waist, his long hair arranged in an untidy bird's-nest. ^He never
C10 163 got up much speed, and made few turns. ^What he did do was to fix us
C10 164 with a basilisk stare, make odd pointing gestures and keep improvising
C10 165 for about twenty minutes. ^A polite attempt to drive him offstage with
C10 166 a burst of applause only spurred him to go on and on.
C10 167    |^Eventually his attention wandered from his work, and his eye hit
C10 168 on a ground mike near the footlights. ^He had a bright idea. ^He
C10 169 stopped dancing, pulled the mike upstage and, indicating his anklets
C10 170 of bells, told us ^*"Now I will make you hear one bell*- just one
C10 171 bell, not four hundred.**" ^Starting with the full carillon (if
C10 172 someone had not turned off the mike we should have been deafened) he
C10 173 went into a shuddering Antonio-type diminuendo. ^Even so I heard not
C10 174 *1one *0bell, but at least six. ^Then he started dancing again.
C10 175    |
C10 176    |^*4T*2HE *0able drummer, the flautist who was *"a worthy disciple
C10 177 to the great living Flute Wizard Sri {0T. R.} Mahalingam, *'Mali to
C10 178 his innumerable fans**',**" and the nice lady singer who let it be
C10 179 known that she was *"married to \0Mr. Narian who was a dancing partner
C10 180 to the Veteran Dancer \0Mr. Ramgopal**" seemed embarrassed. ^And I
C10 181 exchanged looks with a neighbour who happened to be a one-year-old
C10 182 (yes) Indian boy in a white fur coat.
C10 183 *<*6RECORDS*>
C10 184 *<*4Hands and Feet*>
C10 185 *<By *6FELIX APRAHAMIAN*>
C10 186    |^*4R*2ECORDING *0companies no longer neglect the King of
C10 187 Instruments, and the recent spate of organ records reflects the
C10 188 younger and more discriminating organ fanciers' demands for
C10 189 authenticity of timbre and interpretation.
C10 190    |^The fascination as well as the bugbear of the organ is that no
C10 191 two are alike in specification or sound, so that discs of organ music
C10 192 played on the very instrument for which it was conceived deserve an
C10 193 especial welcome. ^Some, of course, remain curiosities rather than
C10 194 performances: Widor was an octogenarian when he recorded his toccata,
C10 195 the organist's warhorse, at Saint-Sulpice. ^Now, his pupil and
C10 196 successor, Marcel Dupre*?2, himself in his seventies and a pioneer of
C10 197 organ records, has re-recorded it there in a coupling with Widor's
C10 198 fifth and *"Gothic**" symphonies which shows how well his master
C10 199 *"scored**" for his beloved Cavaille*?2-Coll instrument.
C10 200 ^(Westminster*- mono only.)
C10 201    |
C10 202    |^*4M*2ERCURY *0issue five discs of Dupre*?2 at Saint-Sulpice, of
C10 203 which two are of particular interest, \0Vol. 2 consisting entirely of
C10 204 his own music, and \0Vol. 5 which also includes *"{Les bergers},**"
C10 205 by his one-time pupil Olivier Messaien. ^Noisy surfaces, but the right
C10 206 kind of noise behind them.
C10 207    |^Another Dupre*?2 pupil, the Belgian Flor Peeters, has recorded
C10 208 some pre-Bach organ music from North Germany and the Netherlands on
C10 209 the Schnitger rebuild **[SIC**] at \0St. Michael's, Zwolle. ^Clearer
C10 210 music and a clearer sound. ^A splendid record. ^({0HMV}*- mono.)
C10 211 *# 2001
C11   1 **[082 TEXT C11**]
C11   2 *<*6THAT NOVEL BY THE TUTOR IN MORAL PHILOSOPHY RAISES AN INTRIGUING
C11   3 QUESTION*>
C11   4 *<*5Why has this face appeared among the best-sellers?*>
C11   5 *<*4The *6BOOK PAGE*- *4by *6ROBERT PITMAN*>
C11   6 **[ILLUSTRATION**]
C11   7    |^P*2ERHAPS *0you recognise that heavy and somewhat sullen face on
C11   8 the left. ^If you are fond of being in the fashion you certainly ought
C11   9 to.
C11  10    |^For weeks now those thick-lidded and decidedly untwinkling eyes
C11  11 have stared out at the readers of a succession of heavy literary
C11  12 magazines and review pages. ^For weeks the owner of the face has had
C11  13 her name at the top of the list of best-selling novelists.
C11  14    |^She is Miss Iris Murdoch, tutor in moral philosophy at \0St.
C11  15 Anne's College, Oxford; wife of \0Mr. John Bayley, a fellow don; and
C11  16 author of *6A SEVERED HEAD, *0which was published in June amid a loud
C11  17 cooing of intellectual approval.
C11  18    |^Miss Murdoch is the author of several books. ^Yet suddenly, with
C11  19 her fifth novel, she has been sifted out by the priests of culture for
C11  20 their own honours list. ^Her name has acquired an almost visible halo.
C11  21    |^For those who wish to impress, it can now be plopped confidently
C11  22 into a conversation like French seasoning upon a salad.
C11  23    |^Soon those who cannot quite afford Scandinavian cutlery or
C11  24 furniture from Heals will have the latest Iris Murdoch in their
C11  25 sitting-rooms instead.
C11  26    |^And soon, no doubt, an interviewer from the {0B.B.C.} programme
C11  27 *"Monitor**" will be leading {0TV} cameras around Miss Murdoch's
C11  28 house at Steeple Aston outside Oxford with the awed, hushed tread
C11  29 appropriate to a cathedral.
C11  30 *<*7DEGENERATE*>
C11  31    |^*0Yet, despite all this attention, no one has mentioned the
C11  32 really outstanding characteristic of Miss Murdoch's new novel.
C11  33    |^It is not its style, which is often pretentious and sometimes a
C11  34 little lame.
C11  35    |^It is not its characters, which are unbelievable, nor its
C11  36 background, which is inaccurate and unreal.
C11  37    |^It is the fact that this story from the Oxford Moral Philosophy
C11  38 Department is, by the standards of most people, utterly degenerate.
C11  39    |^That is an epithet I rarely use on this page. ^Even when it is
C11  40 justified the best criticism is usually silence. ^There are too many
C11  41 booksellers, not all by any means in the back streets, who gloat over
C11  42 condemnation of their wares with the relish with which some film
C11  43 distributors greet an *"X**" certificate.
C11  44    |^Yet *1A Severed Head *0has already been given its *"X**" by the
C11  45 mandarin reviewers. ^Their coy or leering references to its plot have
C11  46 kept it selling well for weeks on end. ^I do not feel it out of place
C11  47 to offer a corrective.
C11  48 *<*7PLEASED*>
C11  49    |^*1A Severed Head *0is the story of a wine merchant named Martin
C11  50 Lynch-Gibbon. ^We meet him first of all watching his mistress, Georgie
C11  51 Hands, while (*1*"with a tense demure consciousness**" *0of his gaze)
C11  52 she draws on the peacock-blue stockings which Lynch-Gibbon has given
C11  53 her.
C11  54    |^Lynch-Gibbon is pleased with life. ^His wife Antonia, though a
C11  55 few years older than he is, is beautiful, intellectually stimulating*-
C11  56 and knows nothing about Georgie. ^Then, piece by piece, Lynch-Gibbon's
C11  57 complacency is shattered.
C11  58    |^Antonia falls in love with her American psychiatrist and goes to
C11  59 live with him. ^The psychiatrist's ugly but mysterious half-sister,
C11  60 Honor Klein, also upsets Lynch-Gibbon by finding out about Georgie and
C11  61 telling Antonia.
C11  62    |^A penitent Lynch-Gibbon is severely rebuked by his wife and her
C11  63 psychiatrist lover for deceiving them over Georgie. ^Then Lynch-Gibbon
C11  64 has a fight with Honor Klein in a cellar *1(*"she came against me with
C11  65 both hands pushing and clawing, and endeavoured to drive her knee into
C11  66 my stomach.**").
C11  67    |^*0After this encounter, Lynch-Gibbon decides that he is
C11  68 fascinated with the rather repellent Miss Klein. ^He goes to her house
C11  69 in Cambridge, gets in through an open door, and finds her in bed with
C11  70 her psychiatrist half-brother.
C11  71    |^Before the book ends Georgie gives herself first to
C11  72 Lynch-Gibbon's brother, Alexander, and then to the psychiatrist.
C11  73 ^Antonia leaves the psychiatrist for her brother-in-law Alexander.
C11  74 ^And Lynch-Gibbon is left with the incestuous, slightly-moustached
C11  75 Miss Klein.
C11  76    |^I should also mention that in addition to all these humourless
C11  77 couplings Lynch-Gibbon suffers from a homosexual liking for the
C11  78 psychiatrist too.
C11  79    |^Such is the novel which \0Mr. Cyril Connolly greeted as *1*"a
C11  80 heaven-sent gift**" *0and which led \0Mr. Alan Pryce-Jones to exclaim
C11  81 ~*1*"She triumphs,**" *0and \0Mr. Kenneth Allsop, the *"Tonight**"
C11  82 interviewer, to give as his judgment: ^*1*"She has the rare universal
C11  83 eye of the great novelist.**"
C11  84    |^*0Which, I believe you will decide, is all my rare universal eye
C11  85 and Betty Martin.
C11  86 *<*7SO WRONG*>
C11  87    |^*0True, the praise has not been unrelieved. ^\0Mr. Connolly
C11  88 himself pointed out that Miss Murdoch, having chosen a wine merchant
C11  89 as a hero, goes wrong over almost every detail concerning wine.
C11  90    |^\0Mr. Philip Toynbee, with some justice, wrote: ^*1*"Though she
C11  91 does not wish us to admire any of the characters, except Honor, she
C11  92 does demand of us a credulity, a sympathy, and a concern which I have
C11  93 found quite impossible to give.**"
C11  94    |^*0\0Mr. Peter Forster likened Miss Murdoch's dialogue to Ethel
C11  95 \0M. Dell. ^Yet the striking thing is that none of these critics
C11  96 challenged Miss Murdoch's novel on moral grounds.
C11  97    |^I would not ask them to denounce it as pornography. ^*1A Severed
C11  98 Head *0is not pornography.
C11  99    |^It is so stuffed with turgid and often meaningless symbolism that
C11 100 only an extreme masochist could drive himself to read it for the
C11 101 kicks. ^Nor is it propagandist as *1Lolita *0was. ^It does not enthuse
C11 102 over incest or homosexuality.
C11 103    |^It does not enthuse. ^It does worse*- it merely yawns.
C11 104    |^It enshrines the bored and disgusted-by-nothing attitude of that
C11 105 shallow but influential clique which dominates the literary weeklies
C11 106 and the {0B.B.C.} Brains Trust and which tries to make normal,
C11 107 human, shockable people feel like country cousins or like the *"pi**"
C11 108 little boys who dare to remain mute while the rest of the dormitory is
C11 109 giggling over dirty stories.
C11 110    |^The critics who praised *1Lolita *0defended the author's moral
C11 111 notions. ^But there was no such defence of Miss Murdoch*- the critics
C11 112 were so sophisticated that they saw nothing which needed defending.
C11 113    |^The Observer wrote: ^*1*"She is serious, Leftish, and
C11 114 high-minded, with a sharp brain tempered by good sense: an English
C11 115 university seems just the right background for her.**" ^*0But is
C11 116 *"high**" the most apt word for Miss Murdoch's mind?
C11 117    |^For this is not her only puzzling novel. ^In her often
C11 118 brilliantly funny second book, *1Flight from the Enchanter, *0Rosa, a
C11 119 sensible upper-middle-class young lady, befriends two Poles whom she
C11 120 meets in a factory. ^She teaches them English in their sordid room in
C11 121 Pimlico while their aged mother, lying on a mattress on the floor,
C11 122 looks on.
C11 123    |^Occasionally the brothers dance round the mother or prod her with
C11 124 their feet. ^One cries: ^{3*1*"You old rubbish! ^You old sack! ^We
C11 125 soon kill you, we put you under floorboards, you not stink there worse
C11 126 than here!**"}
C11 127 *<*7WATCHING*>
C11 128    |^*0One day Rosa goes to meet the brothers and finds only one of
C11 129 them, Stefan, waiting for her. ^He takes her to the room where he
C11 130 says: ^{3*1*"We make love now, Rosa. ^It is time.**"}
C11 131    |^*0*"Your mother!**" exclaims Rosa, noticing the old lady's
C11 132 watching eyes.
C11 133    |^{3*1*"She not see, not hear,**"} *0is the reply.
C11 134    |^The next day Rosa finds only the other brother, Jan, waiting. ^In
C11 135 the room at Pimlico, Rosa asks: ^*"You know about Stefan?**"
C11 136    |^Jan replies sternly: ^{3*1*"Of course. ^And now is me.**"}
C11 137    |^*0Of this incident one critic has written:*-
C11 138    |^*1*"This whole episode is a brutal commentary on the equivocal
C11 139 nature of pity: the revulsion of feeling which an unequal relationship
C11 140 inspires.**"
C11 141    |^*0It may be, of course, that the stud-farm entanglements of Miss
C11 142 Murdoch's latest book are also a brutal commentary on something's
C11 143 equivocal nature.
C11 144    |^Unfortunately, if they are, even Miss Murdoch's most
C11 145 distinguished admirers seem unable to discover exactly what that
C11 146 something is.
C11 147    |^Miss Murdoch's publishers claim that *1A Severed Head *"is as
C11 148 exciting as Treasure Island.**"
C11 149    |^*0In the ultra-sophisticated society in which comparisons like
C11 150 that can be made and in which people like Miss Murdoch are not just
C11 151 the rebels but the *1teachers, *0it is little wonder that the young
C11 152 are occasionally more interested in yellow golliwogs than in the works
C11 153 of old squares like {0R. L.} Stevenson.
C11 154 *<*6DISTURBING*- THIS NOVEL ABOUT A TOP TORY*>
C11 155    |^N*2OW *0for another disturbing novel. ^It is *6THE MINISTER
C11 156 (*1Hamish Hamilton, 16\0s.) *0by Maurice Edelman, the suave,
C11 157 culture-loving and luxuriantly good-looking {0M.P.} who represents
C11 158 the car-workers of Coventry North. ^\0Mr. Edelman has himself made an
C11 159 intense study of British political novels.
C11 160    |^To literary societies he has lectured in languorous tones about
C11 161 John Galt, who wrote *1The Borough *0(subject: political jobbery) in
C11 162 1832, and about {0A. E. W.} Mason, best-known for *1The Four
C11 163 Feathers *0but also the author of *1The Turnstile *0(based on Mason's
C11 164 own brief career as Liberal {0M.P.} for Coventry).
C11 165    |^Now, in *1The Minister *0I believe that Edelman has produced a
C11 166 novel which itself deserves a very high place indeed in the roll of
C11 167 political fiction.
C11 168    |^It is certainly the novel which I have enjoyed most in 1961.
C11 169 *<*5A reservation*>
C11 170    |^*0It tells how Melville, a Tory Minister, achieves the aim of
C11 171 every Tory Minister. ^He becomes Tory Prime Minister. ^But his public
C11 172 triumph is hollow since he has simultaneously discovered that his
C11 173 plain but well-loved wife has also allowed herself to be well loved by
C11 174 his own brother and perhaps by other friends as well.
C11 175    |^Set against this theme is the story of how Melville, having said:
C11 176 *1*"I want the African to be my brother,**" *0adds in an indiscreet
C11 177 whisper, *1*"but not my brother-in-law.**"
C11 178    |^*0The pretty lady at whom the indiscretion is directed is the
C11 179 mistress of an Opposition Leader. ^Duly circulated and printed in the
C11 180 Press, it stirs riots in Africa and almost wrecks Melville's career.
C11 181    |^Why do I call the novel disturbing? ^It is not because of
C11 182 Edelman's approach to morals which*- unlike Miss Murdoch's*- is both
C11 183 adult and real.
C11 184    |^No, the disturbing thing about *1The Minister *0is that far from
C11 185 being artificial, it too often rings frighteningly true.
C11 186 *<*5No malice*>
C11 187    |^*0For it portrays a Tory leadership whose aim, above all, is to
C11 188 be free from any supposedly naive, old-fashioned notions about
C11 189 patriotism or Empire or national greatness. ^A leadership which thinks
C11 190 it oh-so-civilised and cultured to be just a little weary and cynical
C11 191 about everything.
C11 192    |^Socialist Edelman does not present this portrait with political
C11 193 malice. ^Indeed, it is clear that, despite his Coventry connections
C11 194 the Melville attitude is his attitude too.
C11 195    |^But I must draw attention to one fairy-tale element in this
C11 196 otherwise true-to-life novel. ^In avoiding any appearance of party
C11 197 prejudice, Edelman goes so far as to put epigrams*- yes, actual
C11 198 *1epigrams*- *0into the mouths of everyday Tory back-benchers.
C11 199 *<*6FROM A NEW BOOK, AN INTRIGUING ACCOUNT OF LIFE IN THE LAND OF
C11 200 MISTS*>
C11 201 *<*4The sad, macabre tale of the bride they called Miss Fuegia Basket*>
C11 202 *<*6THE BOOK PAGE*>
C11 203 *<*4by *6ROBERT PITMAN*>
C11 204    |^J*2UST *0north of the seas that surge and shriek round Cape Horn,
C11 205 the land mass which we call America tails away in a region of mist,
C11 206 sleet, and death. ^The people who live there, scratching a bare living
C11 207 from the rocks or wading into the ice-cold surf to collect limpets,
C11 208 are still among the most wretched on earth.
C11 209    |^Not long ago their life was even more desolate. ^In Britain today
C11 210 it is fashionable to discuss the problem of old age. ^During the last
C11 211 century it was reported that the people north of Cape Horn had solved
C11 212 the problem of what to do with the old folk.
C11 213    |^In times of famine *1they ate them.
C11 214    |^*0It is not surprising, therefore, that out of that sleet and
C11 215 mist comes one of the saddest and most macabre little stories that I
C11 216 have ever read.
C11 217    |^I take it from *6THE WONDERS OF LIFE ON EARTH *0by the Editors of
C11 218 *1Life *0and Lincoln Barnett *1(Prentice-Hall, 70\0s.). ^*0You would
C11 219 be wrong to shudder at the price. ^For a family with a budding
C11 220 biologist in its midst the book is more than worth it.
C11 221    |^In wonderful photographs and paintings it parades the bizarre
C11 222 quirks of evolution*- such as the dawn-flying silk moth, with its
C11 223 absurdly long wing-filaments which rustle while it flies.
C11 224    |^The filaments act like the tin-foil dropped by bombers to deceive
C11 225 radar.
C11 226 *# 2010
C12   1 **[083 TEXT C12**]
C12   2 *<*6A UNIQUE TONE OF VOICE*>
C12   3 *<*5The Complete Poems of Cavafy.*>
C12   4 *<*4Translated by Rae Dalven. 234\0pp. Hogarth Press. 25\0s.*>
C12   5    |^*0Any new translation of Cavafy is to be welcomed, especially
C12   6 when it claims to be *"complete**"*- and no doubt it is complete in
C12   7 the sense that it covers all those poems which have so far been
C12   8 published in Greek. ^The previous collection in English, translated by
C12   9 Professor Mavrogordato, has long been difficult to acquire. ^Thus this
C12  10 new work fulfils an important need.
C12  11    |^Some of Cavafy's most celebrated and most characteristic poems
C12  12 were written as early as 1911 and he wrote poems in every subsequent
C12  13 year until his death in 1933. ^To English readers he was first
C12  14 introduced by {0E. M.} Forster, who, in his *1Pharos and Pharillon,
C12  15 *0published in 1923, wrote a witty and affectionate description of the
C12  16 poet in which occur the significant words *"...a Greek gentleman in a
C12  17 straw hat, standing absolutely motionless at a slight angle to the
C12  18 universe**". ^And one is inclined to say that the *"slight angle**"
C12  19 implies more than eccentricity (and Cavafy was certainly eccentric);
C12  20 it reminds one, too, of the {*1leve clinamen} *0of Lucretius*- the
C12  21 slight deviation from the regular which is at the root of all
C12  22 creation.
C12  23    |^For one of the first things which strikes one about Cavafy is
C12  24 that he is unique. ^This is a point well made by \0Mr. Auden in his
C12  25 introduction when he writes: ^*"I have read translations of Cavafy
C12  26 made by many different hands, but every one of them was immediately
C12  27 recognizable as a poem by Cavafy; nobody else could possibly have
C12  28 written it.**" ^This does not mean, of course, that all translations
C12  29 of Cavafy are equally good; but it does mean that it is almost
C12  30 impossible to translate him in a way that is positively misleading.
C12  31 ^The authentic voice is certain to come through.
C12  32    |^The present translation by Miss Rae Dalven is no exception to the
C12  33 rule. ^Sometimes one may deplore a certain insensitivity to rhythm,
C12  34 and sometimes one may wish that Miss Dalven had been more ambitious*-
C12  35 had attempted, for instance, to reproduce the rhyme which Cavafy uses
C12  36 in many of his poems. ^But on the whole the work is careful and exact.
C12  37 ^What \0Mr. Auden calls Cavafy's *"unique tone of voice**" is
C12  38 everywhere recognizable. ^It is not so gracefully represented as in
C12  39 the translations of Professor Mavrogordato, but in quantity this
C12  40 volume has the advantage over the earlier one.
C12  41    |^It is unfortunately doubtful whether the reader will be greatly
C12  42 helped by \0Mr. Auden's introduction. ^Early on in this \0Mr. Auden
C12  43 comes to the odd conclusion that *"if the importance of Cavafy's
C12  44 poetry is his unique tone of voice, there is nothing for a critic to
C12  45 say, for criticism can only make comparisons**". ^This, certainly,
C12  46 does not prevent \0Mr. Auden from going on himself for seven closely
C12  47 printed pages, which contain few *"comparisons**". ^But the pages are
C12  48 not very illuminating. ^Much more sensitive and thorough studies are
C12  49 to be found in Sir Maurice Bowra's *1The Creative Experiment *0and in
C12  50 \0Mr. Sherrard's *1The Marble Threshing Floor. ^*0These writers are
C12  51 aware that one function of criticism is to explain and they avoid such
C12  52 nearly meaningless statements as, ^*"Cavafy has three principal
C12  53 concerns: love, art, and politics in the original Greek sense**". ^Is
C12  54 it the politics of Homer, of Pericles, of Aristotle? ^Nothing could be
C12  55 more remote from Cavafy than any of these. ^What is in fact the case
C12  56 is that he was concerned with a view of a Greek's place in history, a
C12  57 view which was peculiarly his own and which has been found by his
C12  58 contemporaries and successors in the Greek tradition peculiarly true
C12  59 and enlightening. ^It is a view taken from *"a slight angle to the
C12  60 universe**", but is none the less accurate for that.
C12  61    |^Nearly the whole of Cavafy's life was spent in Alexandria. ^This,
C12  62 as can be seen when one knows Cavafy, was a fitting background. ^It
C12  63 was the city founded by Alexander the Great, the city where he was
C12  64 buried, the city above all symbolical of the diffusion of Greek
C12  65 language and culture from the Indus to the far west. ^Of other Greek
C12  66 cities only Athens and Constantinople have equally powerful
C12  67 associations, and the worlds of Alexandria and Constantinople are, of
C12  68 course, utterly different from the world of fifth-century Athens. ^It
C12  69 was out of the world of the Greek dispersal that Cavafy created his
C12  70 personal mythology*- a world both of triumph and disaster, a world of
C12  71 courage, of humour and of irony. ^Cavafy was the first modern Greek
C12  72 poet who contrived to be patriotic without being romantic, and his
C12  73 method was to stand at *"a slight angle**" to what is assumed to be
C12  74 the universe of history. ^His favourite subjects are from Antioch,
C12  75 Alexandria, Byzantium, or from Greek states already subjugated to
C12  76 Rome. ^These are themes which we, in our normal classical education,
C12  77 are encouraged to regard as *"decadent**"; and indeed so strong is
C12  78 prejudice that one will still find people who will apply the adjective
C12  79 *"decadent**" to Cavafy's poetry. ^It is therefore refreshing to find
C12  80 such a critic as Sir Maurice Bowra, who writes: *"...respect for human
C12  81 courage and character is perhaps Cavafy's most characteristic note**".
C12  82    |^The same gentle understanding and forceful irony are to be found
C12  83 in the poems that deal with love (always homosexual love). ^Here again
C12  84 \0Mr. Auden does not help our understanding when he writes: ^*"The
C12  85 erotic world he depicts is one of casual pickups and short-lived
C12  86 affairs.**" ^These are sometimes part of the theme, but from such
C12  87 things emerges a splendour of which \0Mr. Auden seems unaware. ^Has he
C12  88 not read *"Myres**" or *"The Mirror in the Hall**"?
C12  89    |^However, Cavafy can speak, and has spoken, for himself. ^He has
C12  90 been the greatest influence from the past on contemporary Greek poetry
C12  91 and has already influenced poets in many other languages. ^His
C12  92 complete sincerity, his angular stance, his tenderness that is
C12  93 combined with the accuracy of a surgeon, his awareness of the past in
C12  94 the present and of the present in the past, his meticulousness, his
C12  95 grandeur*- these are some of the qualities which no reader can fail to
C12  96 observe and which, singly and together, make him one of the greatest
C12  97 writers of our times.
C12  98 *<*6REBELS WITH A PEN*>
C12  99 *<*2BRUCE INGHAM GRANGER: *1Political Satire in the American
C12 100 Revolution, 1763-1783. *0314\0pp. Cornell University Press. London:
C12 101 Oxford University Press. 40\0s.*>
C12 102    |^The American Revolution produced some first-class writing of the
C12 103 solemn and more dignified types. ^Burke on one side of the Atlantic,
C12 104 Jefferson on the other, rose to the height of the great argument. ^But
C12 105 judging from the samples quoted in this learned and interesting book,
C12 106 there were no comic equivalents of Jefferson or even of Thomas Paine
C12 107 at work in North America during these twenty years. ^\0Dr. Granger
C12 108 has gleaned most thoroughly and has classified various types of
C12 109 political satire in a sensible fashion. ^But with the possible
C12 110 exception of Franklin, none of the writers he exhumes is of great
C12 111 interest today or deserves anything but historical respect. ^Even
C12 112 Hopkinson, even Trumbull are dim figures and *1M'Fingal *0is a
C12 113 burlesque much more completely forgotten than *1Hudibras. ^*0From the
C12 114 point of view of American literary history, one of the chief types of
C12 115 interest in this book is the evidence it furnishes of the close
C12 116 imitation of English models, of Butler, Swift, Addison, and the
C12 117 contemporary Charles Churchill.
C12 118    |^The versifiers do not display a high degree of technical
C12 119 competence. ^They are, however, bold in the use of rhyme to a degree
C12 120 that would astonish \0Mr. Ogden Nash. ^Thus, one poetaster rhymes
C12 121 *"mouse**" with *"\1sous**", treating *"\1sous**" as a singular noun.
C12 122 ^Even the comparatively competent Trumbull writes:
C12 123 **[BEGIN QUOTE**]
C12 124    |^Behold that martial Macaroni,
C12 125    |Compound of Phoebus and Bellona.
C12 126 **[END QUOTE**]
C12 127    |^The prose writing seems vastly superior. ^Arbuthnot's *1History
C12 128 of John Bull *0was imitated with some success, and Franklin managed
C12 129 adroitly the humorous atrocity story suggesting that the ministerial
C12 130 troops should castrate the American males. ^It is possible, however,
C12 131 that the editors of the great new edition of Franklin's works will not
C12 132 accept all the identifications made here.
C12 133    |^The themes reflect the controversies of the age. ^The Quebec Act
C12 134 with its threat of popery provoked a great deal of irrelevant
C12 135 indignation. ^The Royalists were inclined to sneer at the low social
C12 136 origins and vulgar ambitions of the rebel leaders, and Franklin's
C12 137 reputed irreligion laid him open to attack. ^The rebel propagandists
C12 138 became increasingly hostile to the king and scornful to the royal
C12 139 representatives, civil and military. ^The alleged amorous propensities
C12 140 of these representatives of the Crown were duly noted. ^Their morals
C12 141 as well as their good faith were impugned. ^Hessians, Irish, Welsh
C12 142 were assailed as well as the universally unpopular Scots.
C12 143    |^This is a useful and a mildly entertaining book, although its
C12 144 author does not show that mastery of the political background
C12 145 displayed by Professor Arthur \0M. Schlesinger, \0Sr., in his recent
C12 146 investigation of revolutionary propaganda. ^It is probably useless to
C12 147 protest against the failure to give the Howe brothers their proper
C12 148 titles. ^And the complicated history of George Sackville may excuse
C12 149 the fact that he appears as Lord Germain, a title he never held.
C12 150 *<*6IN DEFENCE OF LAWRENCE*>
C12 151 *<*2{0F. J.} TEMPLE: {0*1D. H.} Lawrence. *0237\0pp. Paris:
C12 152 Seghers. 12 {0N.F.}*>
C12 153    |^It is not difficult to imagine how Lawrence's habitual and often
C12 154 very outspoken frankness together with his almost incredible
C12 155 confidence in his own insights aroused the resentment of many of those
C12 156 whom he knew. ^(It is true that in his preface to \0M. Temple's
C12 157 biography \0Mr. Richard Aldington claims that he personally bore no
C12 158 grudge at all for the home truths he was asked to swallow. ^He reminds
C12 159 his French readers of Rimbaud's obscene parting rites in the home of
C12 160 an acquaintance and explains that Lawrence's own ungrateful mocking of
C12 161 those who had helped him was only to be expected in a great artist.)
C12 162 ^Someone as courageous as Lawrence in following the promptings of his
C12 163 own intuition is bound to inspire the jealousy or the envy of those
C12 164 who are more timorous and conventional and it is probably for this
C12 165 reason that so few of his critics, whether or not they have known him
C12 166 personally, have been capable of a truly disinterested assessment of
C12 167 his character and genius.
C12 168    |^\0M. Temple's short study of the life and works is on the whole
C12 169 eulogistic and he defends Lawrence vigorously against some of the
C12 170 charges that have been brought against him in the past: that he was a
C12 171 precursor of Nazism, that he sentimentalized the noble Mexican savage,
C12 172 that he suffered from the neuroses described in Murry's *1Son of Woman
C12 173 *0and that he earned money to which he was not entitled by publishing
C12 174 Maurice Magnus's *1Memoirs. ^*0It is only occasionally that he gives
C12 175 the impression of not wanting to sound too impressed, as, for example,
C12 176 when he mentions in passing the numerous (unspecified)
C12 177 \*1pue*?2rilite*?2s *0in Lawrence's daily life and in many of his
C12 178 books. ^\0M. Temple makes good use of the available biographical
C12 179 information. ^He also quotes lengthily and well from Lawrence's
C12 180 letters. ^If one is forced to conclude that he seriously misrepresents
C12 181 both the life and the work of Lawrence it is not therefore because he
C12 182 is swayed by any deep prejudice or because of any particular
C12 183 inaccuracy (his worst inaccuracy is to describe Ursula in *1The
C12 184 Rainbow *0as Tom Brangwen's daughter).
C12 185    |^The principal defect of this book is that it is written in a
C12 186 style which will convey to the reader little or nothing of the
C12 187 resemblances between Lawrence's inner life and his own:
C12 188 **[LONG FOREIGN QUOTATION**]
C12 189    |^\0M. Temple writes in cliche*?2s and in doing so not only
C12 190 distorts the essential biographical facts but attributes cliche*?2s of
C12 191 thought and expression to Lawrence.
C12 192 *<*6DEFIANT GESTURES*>
C12 193 *<*2ALFRED MARNAU: \*1Ra"uber-Requiem. *0123\0pp. Salzburg: Otto
C12 194 Mu"ller. {0DM}. 10.90.*>
C12 195    |^*0Alfred Marnau, who was born in Bratislava in 1918 and has lived
C12 196 in England since before the war, shares with Rilke and Kafka the
C12 197 distinction of having origins which seem to escape national
C12 198 boundaries. ^Like them he also makes of German his own language, which
C12 199 seems hammered out, a medium suggesting sheets of gold leaf.
C12 200 *# 2004
C13   1 **[084 TEXT C13**]
C13   2 *<*6SEARCHER FOR ATLANTIS*>
C13   3    |^*"I *2LOOKED *0down on the blackness where trees filled the
C13   4 quarry and the valley bottoms, and it seemed that the world, my own
C13   5 home-world, was strange again.**"
C13   6    |^Much of Lawrence is suggested by that one sentence from his
C13   7 earliest novel, *1The White Peacock. ^*0His own home-world dominates
C13   8 the novels up to *1Women in Love, *0is the setting of many of the
C13   9 tales, and is the world to which he returns in *1Lady Chatterley.
C13  10 ^*0It is described with a faithfulness that makes Lawrence impressive
C13  11 simply as the recorder of a social scene, but his art, even in the
C13  12 autobiographical *1Sons and Lovers, *0is such as to render the
C13  13 familiar original and mysterious. ^This power to make the known world
C13  14 *"strange again**" is part of his inheritance from the great
C13  15 Romantics.
C13  16    |^The excessive amount of attention at present being given to his
C13  17 treatment of the sexual relationship (bringing us perilously close to
C13  18 what Lawrence himself despised as *"sex in the head**") must not be
C13  19 allowed to obscure the more fundamental truth that he was the latest,
C13  20 and the most compelling, writer in the English Romantic tradition.
C13  21 ^Coleridge's definition of the secondary imagination, with its stress
C13  22 on the transmutation of experience by an essentially creative process
C13  23 into something of visionary freshness, can be taken as an exact
C13  24 description of Lawrence's art; and the most illuminating parallel to
C13  25 the symbolic passages of *1The Rainbow *0and *1Women in Love, *0in
C13  26 which this visionary quality is most apparent, are the moments of
C13  27 revelation in such poems as *1Resolution and Independence *0and *1The
C13  28 Prelude.
C13  29    |^*0This, if not precisely the theme of the collection of essays
C13  30 and reminiscences about {0D. H.} Lawrence edited by Professor Moore,
C13  31 is the underlying truth which they most serve to impress upon the mind
C13  32 of the reader. ^It is consciously there in \0Mr. Herbert
C13  33 Lindenberger's *"Lawrence and the Romantic Tradition**" and probably
C13  34 because of this his essay is the one which seems most consistently and
C13  35 most satisfyingly relevant to the actual effects created by Lawrence's
C13  36 poems and novels. ^But the frequency with which the contributors to
C13  37 \0Mr. Moore's *1Miscellany *0resort to discussion of symbol and myth
C13  38 in Lawrence's work also draws its justification from the almost
C13  39 Wordsworthian preoccupation with *"unknown modes of being**" and
C13  40 *"Fallings from us, vanishings**" that give Lawrence his distinctively
C13  41 Romantic quality. ^\0Mr. Angelo \0P. Bertocci, for example, picks his
C13  42 way very carefully through the mass of overlapping symbolism in
C13  43 *1Women in Love *0to demonstrate how Lawrence's imagination expands
C13  44 the details of his story in ever widening arcs of significance, and he
C13  45 borrows from \0Mr. {0R. A.} Foakes the term *"image of impression**"
C13  46 to describe the mode of this symbolism, so linking it with the poetry
C13  47 of Shelley, Keats, Coleridge and Wordsworth. ^\0Mr. Jascha Kessler, in
C13  48 *"The Myth of *1The Plumed Serpent**", *0interprets Kate's progress
C13  49 towards acceptance of Ramon's Quetzalcoatl cult in terms of the
C13  50 primitive ritual pattern of *"separation*- initiation*- return**", and
C13  51 two other contributors see in Lawrence's use of birds in various parts
C13  52 of his work a conscious remoulding of primitive ritual.
C13  53    |^Such comment is legitimate, but it needs the check of a more
C13  54 inclusive, and at the same time more strictly literary, response.
C13  55 ^Myths as such draw their power from psychological sources and depend
C13  56 upon the existence of a socio-religious culture to which no modern
C13  57 writer has real access (though he may imagine that he has). ^His use
C13  58 of myth, whether he wishes it to be so or not, can therefore be only
C13  59 part of a larger artistic purpose. ^*1The Plumed Serpent *0is an
C13  60 excellent case in point. ^\0Mr. Kessler claims that his analysis of
C13  61 this novel makes *"all the politics and religious demagoguery**" seem
C13  62 irrelevant compared with *"the drama of the hidden primal mythic
C13  63 adventure it subserves**". ^Criticism has been misguided and has
C13  64 underestimated the book because it has *"seized upon the superficial
C13  65 content of the novel and confused it with the story it is really
C13  66 telling**". ^But it was precisely because the *"primal mythic
C13  67 adventure**" could not form the total substance of a novel that
C13  68 Lawrence was driven to invent the paraphernalia of a political and
C13  69 religious movement led by Ramon which \0Mr. Kessler rightly regards as
C13  70 superficial. ^It is impossible to *"rescue**" the myth from the novel.
C13  71 ^One is left with something which the modern reader inevitably finds
C13  72 too thin, too remote, too reminiscent of the world of fairytale; it
C13  73 will not stand on its own. ^Yet neither will it stand on the
C13  74 matchboard stage that Lawrence has contrived for it. ^Without the
C13  75 reality of a fully created novelistic world the myth is itself
C13  76 superficial and unconvincing.
C13  77    |^In placing Lawrence within the Romantic tradition \0Mr.
C13  78 Lindenberger does not make this mistake. ^He begins his essay by
C13  79 making the important distinction between what he calls the *"novel of
C13  80 social relations**"*- which is, in effect, the novel as it has usually
C13  81 displayed itself in English literature, from Jane Austen to Miss Iris
C13  82 Murdoch*- and the *"symbolist novel**" or *"romance**". ^Lawrence, of
C13  83 course, belongs to the latter class, and from here \0Mr Lindenberger
C13  84 goes on to a discussion of Lawrence's Romanticism, the importance of
C13  85 which has already been stressed. ^But, he then argues, it could be
C13  86 said that:
C13  87 **[BEGIN QUOTATION**]
C13  88    |^Lawrence in his best work was able to fuse the two traditions,
C13  89 and it may well be that his contribution to the history of the novel
C13  90 will be seen in his success in instilling the dominant strain of
C13  91 English fiction with the essentially poetic materials of the romantic
C13  92 tradition.
C13  93 **[END QUOTATION**]
C13  94    |^This argument is just and in the correct sequence; it puts the
C13  95 emphasis in the right place. ^The glimpses of *"unknown modes of
C13  96 being**" are the most arresting and the most memorable things in
C13  97 Lawrence's novels, but he is aware that when a novel is given over
C13  98 entirely to the Romantic experience it ceases to be a novel. ^Nor is
C13  99 it true to say that the traditional material serves as a foil to set
C13 100 off the episodes in which Lawrence is more deeply engaged. ^The finest
C13 101 of his *"symbolist novels**", *1The Rainbow *0and *1Women in Love,
C13 102 *0are also his most substantial achievements in realism. ^As social
C13 103 history they are already unrivalled, and their characters (in spite of
C13 104 the now famous letter to Edward Garnett in which Lawrence states that
C13 105 ~*"You mustn't look in my novel for the old stable *1ego *0of the
C13 106 character**") are characters in the good old-fashioned sense of the
C13 107 word. ^Above all, his power to render environment in language that not
C13 108 merely describes but re-creates it (\0Mr. Mark Schorer writes of this
C13 109 in his contribution to the *1Miscellany, *0*"Lawrence and the Spirit
C13 110 of Place**") embeds the Romantic experience in a solid world of
C13 111 sensuous particularity. ^In these novels there is no question of an
C13 112 inner meaning being the true purpose to which the surface of the novel
C13 113 is irrelevant. ^They are coherent wholes. ^The unknown penetrates and
C13 114 fuses with the known to form an indivisible artistic unity.
C13 115    |^Lawrence the novelist is perhaps now beginning to get his due.
C13 116 ^The same cannot yet be said for Lawrence the poet. ^Miss Dallas
C13 117 Kenmare has written a small study of {0D. H.} Lawrence, which is in
C13 118 fact a study of the poetry, but one weakness of that book is its
C13 119 unwillingness to recognize the tough, pawky, realistic side of
C13 120 Lawrence expressed in *"Pansies**" and *"Nettles**". ^Even \0Mr.
C13 121 Alvarez, whose essay in *1The Shaping Spirit *0(here reprinted by
C13 122 Professor Moore) is undoubtedly the best thing yet written on
C13 123 Lawrence's poetry, seems reluctant to give the blunt, sardonic quality
C13 124 its full value. ^He comments excellently on *"Red Geranium and Godly
C13 125 Mignonette**": ~*"There is neither a jot of pretentiousness in the
C13 126 poem, nor of vulgarity, though the opportunity for both certainly
C13 127 offered**", yet he seems to want to dignify it*- oddly enough, by
C13 128 suggesting that it is a poem of wit which, like Donne's, is *"a
C13 129 manifestation of intelligence**". ^This is a minor aberration,
C13 130 however. ^The most important aspect of Lawrence's realism, his
C13 131 *"complete truth to feeling**", is thoroughly grasped by \0Mr.
C13 132 Alvarez, and the essential effect of balance*- the balance of the
C13 133 sharply aware, never half-asleep, whole man*- created by Lawrence's
C13 134 flexibly colloquial language is something which this essay argues so
C13 135 persuasively as to leave the greatness of Lawrence's poetic
C13 136 achievement beyond doubt.
C13 137    |^What Lawrence owed to his working-class background has received
C13 138 some attention in recent years, but not enough. ^The facts are there
C13 139 in Professor Moore's own biography of Lawrence, *1The Intelligent
C13 140 Heart. ^*0Their full significance has yet to be appreciated. ^Two
C13 141 items in the *1Miscellany *0have some bearing on this*-
C13 142 unintentionally supporting one another. ^The first is a letter from
C13 143 Katherine Mansfield to {0S. S.} Koteliansky describing a row between
C13 144 Lawrence and Frieda at Zennor in 1916. ^Katherine Mansfield is shocked
C13 145 and bewildered: ^*"It seems to me so *1degraded*- *0so horrible to see
C13 146 I can't stand it.**" ^(Actually, it reads like a particularly violent
C13 147 farce. ^Lawrence beats Frieda and chases her round the kitchen table,
C13 148 but the next day gives her breakfast in bed and trims her hat.)
C13 149    |^The second is a reprinting from *1Culture and Society *0of \0Mr.
C13 150 Raymond Williams's essay on *"The Social Thinking of {0D. H.}
C13 151 Lawrence**". ^\0Mr. Williams's cool remark that comment on
C13 152 working-class life *"tends to emphasize the noisier factors**"
C13 153 inevitably throws one back to the Katherine Mansfield letter. ^Frieda,
C13 154 of course, was a German aristocrat, and by 1916 Lawrence had come a
C13 155 good way from Eastwood, but is it not possible that their middle-class
C13 156 friends were witnessing in these open rows the continuance of a
C13 157 different tradition? ^At any rate, \0Mr. Williams is certainly right
C13 158 in his comment that in working-class life (of Lawrence's childhood, if
C13 159 not of our day) *"the suffering and the giving of comfort, the common
C13 160 want and the common remedy, the open row and the open making-up, are
C13 161 all part of a continuous life which, in good and bad, makes for a
C13 162 whole attachment**", and the relevance of this to Lawrence's own
C13 163 treatment of personal relations hardly needs comment.
C13 164    |^No one, however, is as good, or as prolific, a commentator on
C13 165 Lawrence as Lawrence himself, and such an immense amount of this
C13 166 commentary is stored away in *1Phoenix *0that its reappearance now
C13 167 after many years of being out of print is a happening of some
C13 168 importance. ^*1Phoenix *0is itself a miscellany, unplanned, yet
C13 169 unified as no other miscellany could be, by the personality of
C13 170 Lawrence himself. ^Some of the things it contains are of rare quality,
C13 171 some interesting for what they add to our understanding of Lawrence's
C13 172 *"philosophy**", some are comparatively trivial pieces; but what
C13 173 matters even more than their individual merits is the cumulative
C13 174 effect which they achieve when brought together in this way. ^The sum
C13 175 even of the novels and poems is greater than the parts, but the
C13 176 existence of a collective meaning, subtly influenced by the presence
C13 177 of the author (which is always felt in Lawrence's work), can be more
C13 178 easily perceived in the sum of *1Phoenix.
C13 179    |^*0The parts can be exasperating. ^Lawrence's hectoring manner in
C13 180 *1Democracy *0grates on the reader, and there are times when his
C13 181 bullying repetitions become insufferable. ^The incantatory style of
C13 182 *1The Reality of Peace *0is nauseating, and though it is a relief to
C13 183 turn to the bluff no-nonsense of *1Education of the People, *0this
C13 184 sounds after a while like wilful crudeness. ^Yet overriding these
C13 185 defects is the sense that here is an essentially fine and original
C13 186 intelligence*- an energy that drives towards real understanding, as
C13 187 against the neat and clever formulations that are so often passed off
C13 188 for understanding. ^One's irritation evaporates.
C13 189    |^There is much talk in *1Phoenix *0of the *"blood-consciousness**"
C13 190 through which Lawrence sought salvation from the debilitating effects
C13 191 of twentieth-century self-consciousness. ^Sometimes in his hatred of
C13 192 its evils he seems to want to sweep away the whole of modern science
C13 193 and technology. ^The *"Autobiographical Fragment**" strongly suggests
C13 194 the influence of William Morris's *1News from Nowhere. ^*0But when he
C13 195 is saying more precisely what he means Lawrence makes it clear that
C13 196 the labour-saving machine is a public benefactor: ^*"Now there is a
C13 197 railing against the machine, as if it were an evil thing.
C13 198 **[MIDDLE OF QUOTE**]
C13 199 *# 2014
C14   1 **[085 TEXT C14**]
C14   2 *<*5New Books (continued)*>
C14   3 *<*6PROGRESS IN SCIENCE*>
C14   4 *<*2SCIENCE SURVEY *=2. *0Edited by {0A. W.} *2HASLETT *0and *2JOHN
C14   5 \0ST. JOHN. *0Vista Books. 30\0s.*>
C14   6    |^A year ago the first volume in this series successfully
C14   7 established the pattern which is here continued. ^The editors ask some
C14   8 20 to 30 working scientists to report on the progress made in selected
C14   9 and limited fields which are their particular concern. ^They appear
C14  10 grouped together, three or four at a time, under more general heads,
C14  11 with some useful cross references and a good index; each short chapter
C14  12 contains suggestions for further reading.
C14  13    |^Very little knowledge of the subject under discussion is
C14  14 presupposed, though in spite of its clarity this could not be a
C14  15 *"popular**" work for people innocent of all scientific training. ^It
C14  16 seems aimed in particular at the sixth-former beginning to specialize,
C14  17 who ought to be given every chance to read such first-hand accounts of
C14  18 the advances made in subjects whose dead past is already all too
C14  19 familiar from the text-books. ^In his Foreword Professor Le Gros Clark
C14  20 puts it explicitly:
C14  21 **[BEGIN INDENTATION**]
C14  22 **[BEGIN QUOTE**]
C14  23    |^Today, when the demand for more and more recruits in the
C14  24 different branches of science has become so insistent, it is of the
C14  25 highest importance that the interest of potential scientists should be
C14  26 early aroused by having accounts of current trends in scientific
C14  27 research presented in a readily intelligible style.
C14  28 **[END QUOTE**]
C14  29 **[END INDENTATION**]
C14  30 *<*6FUTURE EFFECT*>
C14  31    |^*0Surveys such as these at regular intervals may well have a real
C14  32 effect on the future through their power to draw the attention of
C14  33 young scientists to interesting fields of activity.
C14  34    |^Only a brief account of the contents is possible here. ^Two
C14  35 articles on astronomy deal in turn with stellar evolution and the
C14  36 determination of stellar distances. ^Curiously the only contribution
C14  37 to pure physics is a description of recent tests of the particular and
C14  38 general theories of relativity. ^Then come articles about the possible
C14  39 ways in which mountain ranges were built up, and magnetic methods of
C14  40 testing the theory of continental drift. ^These are particularly
C14  41 stimulating because little can be taken for granted in sciences at so
C14  42 complex and unsettled a stage.
C14  43 *<*6DEEP WATER*>
C14  44    |^*0After the earth come the oceans, with observations of the sea
C14  45 floor and of currents. ^A study of plant life in the sea makes the
C14  46 transition to connected articles on the chemistry of plants, and
C14  47 accounts of work on the transmission of nerve impulses and the
C14  48 physiology of muscular activity. ^A section on psychology, *"brain and
C14  49 mind**", treats of the improvement with practice of the ability of
C14  50 animals to learn, the measurement of human mental qualities, their
C14  51 localization in areas of the brain, and the effect of the newer drugs
C14  52 on behaviour. ^This is a particularly controversial area in which
C14  53 scientists easily stray beyond their competence, and there are one or
C14  54 two remarks, such as *"whereas the taking of alcohol has always been
C14  55 regarded as a social and moral question, the giving of drugs,
C14  56 irrespective of their consequences, must always primarily be a medical
C14  57 responsibility**", which certainly demand further discussion.
C14  58    |^We return to solid scientific ground with the assessment of noise
C14  59 annoyance, the strength of materials, metal fatigue, and materials for
C14  60 use at high temperatures. ^Altogether this is a useful piece of work,
C14  61 which has increased our debt to the British Association.
C14  62 *<*6THE REAL FRANCE*>
C14  63 *<*2{VILLAGE EN VAUCLUSE}. *0By *2\0L. WYLIE *0and *2\0A.
C14  64 BE*?2GUE*?2. *0Harrap. 18\0s.*>
C14  65    |^This is a shorter version, in French, by \0M. Armand Be*?2gue*?2,
C14  66 of a much longer American sociological study compiled by \0Mr.
C14  67 Laurence Wylie of Harvard University, using the *"field**" techniques
C14  68 of sociology, anthropology and psychology, applied during \0Mr.
C14  69 Wylie's year's stay in 1950 with his wife and two sons in a village
C14  70 which he calls Peyrane.
C14  71 *<*6DEEP STUDY*>
C14  72    |^*0He presents not a dull statistical treatise nor a light
C14  73 surface-skimming digest, but an examination in depth including
C14  74 {0e.g.} the basic principles of French education and comparative
C14  75 family budgets. ^Nor does he neglect the individual and his
C14  76 psychological reactions*- the village grocer's tirade against *1{la
C14  77 famille nombreuse} *0coming to her shop for credit and the returned
C14  78 deportee's judgment on the Maquis are but two examples of vivid
C14  79 reportage. ^There are two maps, an adequate vocabulary and intelligent
C14  80 questions in French at the end of each chapter. ^The author's many
C14  81 excellent photographs make an integral and illuminating contribution
C14  82 to this attempt to give students *"a valid picture of contemporary
C14  83 French life and to show how a group of French people live from day to
C14  84 day**".
C14  85    |^This is a fascinating book, from the evocative drawing on its
C14  86 title-page to its valuable final chapter, *"{Peyrane en 1959}**",
C14  87 written after further visits, recording the changes brought by
C14  88 tractors, television and main drainage and providing a useful
C14  89 corrective to so many nostalgic pictures of a *"quaint**"
C14  90 old-fashioned France. ^It merits inclusion in any modern-languages
C14  91 library and could be a stimulating basis for a non-literary sixth-form
C14  92 course or a good adult class.
C14  93 *<*6OXFORD PAPERBACKS*>
C14  94    |^*0Martin Cooper's *1French Music, *0a study covering the period
C14  95 from the death of Berlioz to the death of Faure*?2, has now been
C14  96 issued as an Oxford Paperback (Oxford University Press, 7\0s. 6\0d.).
C14  97 ^Ernest Barker's *1Principles of Social and Political Theory *0(price
C14  98 7\0s. 6\0d.) and {0C. K.} Allen's *1Law in the Making *0(price
C14  99 10\0s. 6\0d.) are among other additions to the series.
C14 100 *<*6REVIEWS IN BRIEF*>
C14 101 *<*2CALDERO*?2N: {LA VIDA ES SUEN*?4O}. *0Edited by {0*2A. E.}
C14 102 SLOMAN. *0Manchester University Press. 8\0s. 6\0d.*>
C14 103    |^This edition, with Introduction and Notes by Professor {0A. E.}
C14 104 Sloman, fulfils the need for a new, modern text of the play. ^It is
C14 105 based on the text in the 1636 edition of *1{La Primera Parte de
C14 106 Comedias} *0and takes into account the two *1\Parte *0texts of 1640,
C14 107 the Vera Tassis edition of 1685 and the Zaragoza version of 1636. ^It
C14 108 thus makes use of, as no previous edition has done, all the known
C14 109 texts of the play. ^Professor Sloman has brought spelling up to date,
C14 110 except where this would involve changes in pronunciation, accentuation
C14 111 and capitalization.
C14 112    |^In the Introduction he has covered every aspect of the play under
C14 113 the headings of Date, Sources, Structure and Theme, Language and
C14 114 Metres, Staging and Texts. ^Although the scholarly thoroughness with
C14 115 which every point is treated would satisfy the more advanced and
C14 116 ardent student, the clear and concise manner in which the material is
C14 117 presented makes it interesting and easily digestible for the general
C14 118 or less ambitious reader. ^In particular, the subject of Structure and
C14 119 Theme is discussed very fully, with frequent references to the play
C14 120 itself, and including brief comments on all the characters.
C14 121 ^Throughout, he indicates Caldero*?2n's subtlety as a dramatist. ^A
C14 122 list of books is provided for further reading on the subject under the
C14 123 headings of *"Caldero*?2n in general**" and *"Recent criticism of {La
C14 124 Vida es Suen*?4o}**".
C14 125    |^The Notes, as Professor Sloman himself remarks, are concerned in
C14 126 part with the most interesting of the variant readings he has
C14 127 considered, and also contain comments on classical allusions, passages
C14 128 which present difficulty in comprehension, and differences between
C14 129 Caldero*?2n's vocabulary and syntax and those of present-day Spanish.
C14 130 ^For further assistance, a short index of annotated words and names is
C14 131 included.
C14 132    |^In addition to these considerations the high quality of paper and
C14 133 printing, and the low cost (contributed to by a rather flimsy cover)
C14 134 make the book admirably suited to school use. ^It is certain to
C14 135 commend itself quickly to the notice of the examining boards.
C14 136 *<*2SNORKEL DIVER. *0First Steps in Underwater Swimming. By {0R. B.}
C14 137 *2MATKIN *0and *2{0G. F.} BROOKES. *0Macdonald. 12\0s. 6\0d.*>
C14 138    |^This is a book with plenty of enthusiasm for a sport that has
C14 139 gained rapidly in popularity. ^Few people would attempt to take up
C14 140 underwater swimming without an experienced companion to guide them and
C14 141 they would be ill-advised to try but here they will learn most of the
C14 142 pleasures the sport has in store; how to practise in a swimming bath;
C14 143 and how to remain completely safe.
C14 144    |^Many people must have been excited by the thrills and perils of
C14 145 \0M. Cousteau's *1Silent World *0or been urged to explore the shallow
C14 146 fringes by Miss Rachel Carson's *1The Sea Around Us *0only to be left
C14 147 the feeling that this was beyond them. ^If they swim at all some of
C14 148 the pleasures could be had without the dangers. ^For although snorkel
C14 149 diving is not to be confused with using an aqualung it is proper
C14 150 introduction to it and it is within everybody's means. ^Anyone who
C14 151 swims can learn to use the simple equipment to get more fun out of his
C14 152 bathing. ^Even a comparative beginner can try underwater photography.
C14 153    |^The book is small and unpretentious but not dull and it could
C14 154 encourage many young readers to take the plunge.
C14 155 *<*2PRACTICAL INORGANIC AND ORGANIC PROBLEMS. *0By *2\0M. BROWN.
C14 156 *0Longmans. 4\0s. 9\0d.*>
C14 157    |^It is true, as the author says, that practical chemistry in
C14 158 schools consists largely of volumetric and qualitative analysis, at
C14 159 the examination stage. ^It is also true that this does little more
C14 160 than provide training in manipulation, coupled with some knowledge of
C14 161 reactions. ^The theme here is to give a number of problems which can
C14 162 be solved by carrying out prescribed reactions, followed by
C14 163 application of the principles involved.
C14 164    |^Some university boards and scholarship awarding bodies have used
C14 165 this approach for a long time and the author has been able to use many
C14 166 of the problems which have been set for their examinations. ^To
C14 167 complete the range of work he has added problems which he has himself
C14 168 devised. ^In the organic section he has included a number of reaction
C14 169 schemes in which the student is required to carry out tests on the
C14 170 original, intermediate and final products, which serve to enlighten
C14 171 the deductive processes.
C14 172    |^The function of the book is highly commendable. ^Most teachers,
C14 173 however, faced with the difficulty of raising the largest number of
C14 174 examination candidates to O and A level in the short time available,
C14 175 will shrink from embarking on a scheme which, however educative,
C14 176 demands a level of intellectual ability which only a smaller number of
C14 177 candidates will achieve.
C14 178    |^The university boards could support the author's initiative by
C14 179 requiring that all candidates tackle a question of this type.
C14 180 *<*2THE WEAVER'S BOOK. *0By *2HARRIET TIDBALL. *0Macmillan, New York.
C14 181 38\0s. 6\0d.*>
C14 182    |^In spite of the description on the dust jacket this is not really
C14 183 a book for the absolute beginner. ^It is, however, an excellent
C14 184 text-book for the serious weaver who wishes to attain a high standard
C14 185 of craftsmanship and who is willing to spend the time necessary to
C14 186 explore the many possibilities of design in this ancient craft.
C14 187    |^In addition to chapters on the loom, yarns and preparations for
C14 188 weaving, much of the book is devoted to drafting and a thorough
C14 189 description of the various possible weaves. ^The 109 drafts
C14 190 illustrated are methodically grouped and to them are added some
C14 191 excellent photographs of the finished weaves. ^Miss Tidball's book is
C14 192 the result of much practical experience and contains much sound
C14 193 advice, not only for the beginner but also for the more practical
C14 194 weaver.
C14 195 *<*5The London Theatre*>
C14 196 *<*6YOUNG WRITERS ON THE MOVE*>
C14 197 *<*0From a Correspondent*>
C14 198    |^Although \0Mr. Edward Albee's first play had its first
C14 199 performance here, at the Arts Theatre, he is better known as a
C14 200 dramatist on the continent and in New York. ^On the evidence of *1The
C14 201 Death of Bessie Smith *0and *1The American Dream, *0the double bill at
C14 202 the Royal Court, this is a state of affairs that will soon be put
C14 203 right. ^In passing one must say how good it is to see the short play
C14 204 beginning to have a look in again. ^During the past two or three years
C14 205 we have often seen plays by the most promising of playwrights spoiled
C14 206 by the absurd necessity of inflating a natural three-quarters of an
C14 207 hour into a full theatrical evening.
C14 208    |^*1The Death of Bessie Smith *0tells a simple and terrible story
C14 209 in a laconic, highly charged manner. ^On a hot afternoon, in a
C14 210 crumbling house near Memphis, Tennessee, a nurse is getting ready to
C14 211 go to work; her old father, dreaming of past splendours, is infuriated
C14 212 by the blues wailing out of his daughter's gramophone.
C14 213 *# 2007
C15   1 **[086 TEXT C15**]
C15   2 *<*7NEXT WEEK'S ENTERTAINMENT IN THE CITY*>
C15   3 *<*6CARNE'S STUDY OF YOUTH'S AIMLESSNESS*>
C15   4    |^*4T*2HE *0youth whose symptom is a strange restlessness and a
C15   5 desire to take the best from life without putting anything into it*-
C15   6 the Beatnik*- is depicted in *"{Les Tricheurs}**" (Youthful Sinners),
C15   7 the film coming to the Rex next week, directed by the brilliant
C15   8 Frenchman, Marcel Carne.
C15   9    |^The setting is \0St. Germain-des-Pres and the Latin Quarter of
C15  10 Paris, but it could be anywhere where semi-students and semi-idle
C15  11 youth forgathers, with negative emotions, drowning doubts in jazz and
C15  12 drink, betting stupidly and cheating with life, love and truth.
C15  13 *<*6ACTING AWARDS*>
C15  14    |^*0Marcel Carne does not condemn them; he believes that their way
C15  15 of life is caused through lack of parental interest, and hopes, that
C15  16 through this film, some of these adults will wake up to their
C15  17 responsibilities.
C15  18    |*"{Les Tricheurs}**" was the most successful film to be shown in
C15  19 France last year. ^It was awarded the {Grand Prix du Cinema Francais},
C15  20 and its two stars, Pascale Petit and Jacques Charrier, were given the
C15  21 best actress and actor award of the year for their performances.
C15  22 *<*5Mummers In Play Debut*>
C15  23    |^*0To follow their successful production of *"All My Sons**" by
C15  24 Arthur Miller, shortly to be presented again for the Arts Theatre,
C15  25 {0C.U.} Mummers will give the first Cambridge presentation of *"The
C15  26 Dream of Peter Mann**" by Bernard Kops at the {0A.D.C.} Theatre next
C15  27 week.
C15  28    |^Kops is well known for his *"Hamlet of Stepney Green,**" whose
C15  29 production at the Arts two years ago caused such widespread interest.
C15  30 ^*"The Dream of Peter Mann,**" whose only previous production was at
C15  31 last year's Edinburgh Festival, sees Kops striking a balance between
C15  32 the urgency of his ideas and his talent for vital, colourful
C15  33 entertainment.
C15  34    |^It is to run at the {0A.D.C.} from Tuesday to Saturday of next
C15  35 week at 8.15, with a 2.30 matinee on Saturday.
C15  36 *<*7GUINNESS AND MILLS CONFLICT*>
C15  37    |^*4B*2ASED *0on the best selling novel by James Kennaway, the
C15  38 controversial *"Tunes of Glory,**" comes to the Regal Cinema next week
C15  39 to give cinema-goers the opportunity of seeing two of Britain's most
C15  40 brilliant actors.
C15  41    |^For playing the leading parts of two {0C.O.}'s of a Highland
C15  42 Regiment are Alec Guinness and John Mills, the one having won the
C15  43 affection of his men by leading them through the war, and the other a
C15  44 hard, efficient newcomer who is heartily disliked by the majority of
C15  45 the soldiers.
C15  46    |^The relationship between the two men and their influence on the
C15  47 regiment forms the basis of the plot, while the affairs of the
C15  48 soldiers in their off-time, provides an opportunity to introduce some
C15  49 glamour into this tough and tragic film.
C15  50    |^Supporting roles are played by Dennis Price, John Fraser, Kay
C15  51 Walsh and Susannah Yorke. ^The film is produced by Colin Leslie and
C15  52 directed by Ronald Neaman.
C15  53 *<*6CHRISTIE PLAY ON FILM*>
C15  54    |^*0Following the West End stage success of *"The Spider's Web,**"
C15  55 Agatha Christie's thriller has now been made into a film starring Jack
C15  56 Hulbert, Cicely Courtneidge, Glynis Johns and John Justin.
C15  57    |^It is to be shown at the Central Cinema next week.
C15  58    |^The action covers one day in the lives of the occupants of a
C15  59 pleasant country house who find they have a body on their hands
C15  60 shortly before the arrival of an important foreign diplomat.
C15  61 *<*6GUEST ARTIST*>
C15  62    |^*0At all costs this must be covered up so that the important
C15  63 conference with the {0V.I.P.} can take place, and it is in this
C15  64 endeavour that the plot develops, drawing into it a number of
C15  65 mysterious suspects.
C15  66    |^Introducing 13 years old Wendy Turner to the screen as the
C15  67 daughter of the household, the film also enables David Nixon to make a
C15  68 guest appearance.
C15  69 *<*4New Group's Arts Visit*>
C15  70    |^*0*"The Glass Menagerie,**" thought by some American critics to
C15  71 be Tennessee Williams' greatest play, it is undoubtedly his most
C15  72 heart-felt, has not yet been performed professionally in Cambridge.
C15  73 ^At the Arts Theatre next week, it will be presented by the Group of
C15  74 Three, a new company recently created by Charles Vance, who will
C15  75 direct the play with the same cast*- Imogen Moynihan, Ben Hawthorne,
C15  76 Joan Shore and himself*- that has won critical acclaim elsewhere.
C15  77    |^Charles Vance comes from a theatrical family especially
C15  78 well-known in Northern Ireland. ^Of the other members of the Group of
C15  79 Three, Imogen Moynihan has experience in management as well as being
C15  80 an actress of talent and Joan Shore has been delighting audiences at
C15  81 Ipswich, Northampton, Cromer and other theatres in East Anglia. ^Ben
C15  82 Hawthorne, a young New Zealand actor of great promise, has the
C15  83 important role of the son in *"The Glass Menagerie,**" and completes a
C15  84 cast that is an unusually well-balanced team.
C15  85 *<*4Backstage *'Slums**'*>
C15  86    |^*0Substantial improvements have taken place over a wide range of
C15  87 theatres since 1946, but there are still far too many theatrical slums
C15  88 which could be vastly improved at small cost, declares the quarterly
C15  89 *"Equity Letter.**"
C15  90    |^It calls on all members of the British Actors' Equity Association
C15  91 to write asking their {0M.P.}s to urge the Government not to omit
C15  92 theatres from the proposed legislation concerning amenities in shops
C15  93 and offices.
C15  94 *<*5Two Artists Who Live In Mills*>
C15  95 *<*7WHERE PAINTS & MUSIC GO TOGETHER...*>
C15  96    |^*4M*2USIC *0and painting live side by side complimenting
C15  97 **[SIC**] each other at Pampisford Mill, the home of the
C15  98 Campbell-Taylors.
C15  99    |^While her 24 years old daughter practises at her grand piano,
C15 100 \0Mrs. Campbell-Taylor is often painting at the other end of their
C15 101 ground floor studio. ^*"I can paint better with music as my
C15 102 companion,**" she said.
C15 103    |^The mill has been converted attractively. ^The river swirls a few
C15 104 yards from the front door and provides just the setting of this
C15 105 artistic family.
C15 106    |^\0Mrs. Campbell-Taylor does not like to trade on her husband's
C15 107 name*- he is a Royal Academician*- so she uses her maiden name of
C15 108 Brenda Moore. ^Specialising in portraits she resumed her profession
C15 109 five years ago having seen her daughter launched in her own career as
C15 110 a pianist and teacher.
C15 111 *<*5Won Scholarships*>
C15 112    |^*0Her art training started when, at the age of 14, she was sent
C15 113 for a trial term to the Oxford School of Art. ^Later she went to the
C15 114 Brighton School and was awarded a local scholarship. ^When she was 20
C15 115 years old she won a leaving scholarship to the Royal Academy Schools.
C15 116    |^One of the first visiting members of the Royal Academy to
C15 117 instruct her was \0Mr. Campbell-Taylor who was to become her husband
C15 118 five years later.
C15 119    |^Rather than branch into commercial art on leaving the Academy,
C15 120 she became an apprentice to a picture frame maker, and still makes
C15 121 mounts for her water colours and drawings.
C15 122    |^Although her painting career was interrupted, she helped her
C15 123 husband and continued to accumulate painting knowledge.
C15 124    |^*"You never lose the ability to paint once you have absorbed the
C15 125 first principles in art*- practise **[SIC**] is not as essential in
C15 126 painting as it is for instrument playing,**" she says.
C15 127 *<*5Child Portraits*>
C15 128    |^*0On the difference between the professional and the amateur
C15 129 artist, \0Mrs. Campbell-Taylor said: ^*"It could not be defined by
C15 130 income or pay packet.
C15 131    |^*"The professional is never satisfied with an easy answer and
C15 132 believes that nothing is so worth-while as the problem that arouses
C15 133 all the receptivity, excitement and competence he is capable of
C15 134 experiencing which tuition has accelerated.
C15 135    |^*"For the amateur it is an emotional outlet which can also have
C15 136 its own monetary value in these days.**"
C15 137    |^In the studio she has some delightful portraits and drawings of
C15 138 children, so I asked if she particularly enjoyed this type of work.
C15 139    |^\0Mrs. Campbell-Taylor replied that while having no preference
C15 140 for the age of her subject, she did find painting children
C15 141 particularly interesting and often a challenge. ^She usually stays
C15 142 with the family and makes studies of the child when asleep before
C15 143 attempting the painting. ^*"You really have to get an idea of the
C15 144 personality and form before you start.
C15 145    |^*"It is as exciting and difficult for a child to sit as it is for
C15 146 the painter to paint.
C15 147 **[END QUOTE**]
C15 148 *<*5Clay Modelling*>
C15 149    |^*0*"The fun of portrait painting,**" she added, *"is in trying to
C15 150 assess and understand the temperament of the people you are
C15 151 painting.**"
C15 152    |^As an artist she has learned a considerable amount from clay
C15 153 modelling, which she has exhibited as well as paintings*- including
C15 154 one of the anointing of the Queen Mother, then Queen, at the
C15 155 coronation of George *=6*- at the Royal Academy.
C15 156    |^And recently \0Mrs. Campbell-Taylor had two drawings at the Royal
C15 157 Society of Portrait Painters' Exhibition.
C15 158 *<*6...AND A STUDIO THAT WILL BE LIT BY GLASS DOME*>
C15 159    |^I *2MET *0another artist who will soon be living in a mill*- this
C15 160 time a windmill at Hemingford Grey.
C15 161    |^\0Mrs. Jeanette Jackson, a London abstract painter who is
C15 162 currently exhibiting her work in Cambridge, hopes the conversion of
C15 163 the windmill will be completed by the early autumn.
C15 164    |^The windmill has been admired by \0Mrs. Jackson since childhood
C15 165 and many times, like Jimmy Edwards, she has attempted to buy it, at
C15 166 last being successful.
C15 167    |^It will have a glass dome to let in the light, and the four
C15 168 floors will give plenty of studio room.
C15 169 *<*4Frame Problem*>
C15 170    |^*0The family*- she has a son at Trinity and one daughter*- will
C15 171 spend their week-ends at Hemingford Grey, \0Mrs. Jackson working as an
C15 172 art teacher in a London school during the week.
C15 173    |^The day I met her she had a problem on her hands. ^One of her
C15 174 paintings, 8 \0ft. by 5 \0ft. was sent unframed to the Women's
C15 175 International Art Club's exhibition.
C15 176    |^It came back that morning with a frame, and would not go through
C15 177 the front or back door.
C15 178    |^\0Mrs. Jackson is an extraordinary **[SIC**] prolific painter.
C15 179 ^In one year she paints more than 200 pictures, though not all these
C15 180 survive her critical scrutiny.
C15 181 *<*4Other Interests*>
C15 182    |^*0She is *'passionately fond of cooking.**' ^Having lived in
C15 183 Germany for several years she always cooks their national dishes for
C15 184 her friends unless they are foreigners*- then she always cooks roast
C15 185 beef and apple pie.
C15 186    |^Her other interest is collecting Victoriana. ^When she first
C15 187 started this 25 years ago she bought a Victorian chair for 7\0s 6\0d.,
C15 188 which she is sure will now fetch somewhere in the region of *+30.
C15 189 *<*6A SOLDIER WHO TURNED TO POTTERY AT AGE OF 52*>
C15 190 *<*4Work Of Reychan Exhibited At Heffer Gallery*>
C15 191    |^T*2HE *0Heffer Gallery have just opened an exhibition of the
C15 192 works of Stanislas Reychan, the Polish soldier who began training as a
C15 193 potter at the age of 52.
C15 194    |^His remarkable success must be due to some extent to heredity*-
C15 195 he is of the fifth generation in a family of potters*- but heredity
C15 196 cannot explain everything.
C15 197    |^Almost everyone must have seen his pieces of pottery sculpture at
C15 198 some time or another. ^The shiny little black bulls, with curly
C15 199 foreheads lowered; the rather pear-shaped Adam and Eve figures sitting
C15 200 happily under a snake-entwined tree in a pottery Eden*- pieces like
C15 201 these must be familiar to thousands.
C15 202    |^Reychan has exhibited in the Open Air Exhibitions in London, and
C15 203 for the past six years at the Royal Academy.
C15 204    |^His work has been welcomed as an important modern flowering of
C15 205 the tradition which produced the exquisite pieces of Bow and Chelsea,
C15 206 and the curiosities of Staffordshire.
C15 207    |^Reychan's knights in armour, his medieval heroes, classical
C15 208 personalities, are undeniably works of art of a very vital and
C15 209 individual kind.
C15 210    |^Their appeal, being modern, is direct and uncomplicated. ^In
C15 211 spite of the humour that has gone into a good many of them, they are
C15 212 not without dignity.
C15 213    |^Two companion pieces, Lion and Unicorn, are rather attractive;
C15 214 Hercules (taming a lion), Silenus (his arm thrown blissfully over a
C15 215 barrel), a centaur, executed in unglazed red earthenware, turning to
C15 216 shoot an arrow back over his shoulder*- these are just a few that
C15 217 catch the eye, among many.
C15 218    |^Their prices, considered against the prices of more conventional
C15 219 pottery, are certainly not excessive.
C15 220    |^{0*6P.O.}
C15 221 *<*4Selwyn Mitre Players Good Choice*>
C15 222    |^S*2HAKESPEARE'S *0*"Two Gentlemen of Verona,**" this year's
C15 223 production by the Selwyn Mitre Players, has emerged as a choice
C15 224 well-suited to the available talent, and in general commendable for
C15 225 its boldness, fluency and straight forward interpretation.
C15 226    |^Performed in the College Hall against a dark backcloth, with no
C15 227 scenery other than an odd chair or table to relieve the bareness of
C15 228 the stage, it naturally depended entirely upon the acting for its
C15 229 success.
C15 230 *# 2029
C16   1 **[087 TEXT C16**]
C16   2 *<*4The Post review of next week's shows*>
C16   3 *<*6ANOTHER FROM *'SALAD DAYS**' STABLE*>
C16   4    |^THE *4team behind the longest running musical in the world
C16   5 (*"Salad Days**") have come up with another musical which goes to the
C16   6 West End the week after it has finished at the *6NOTTINGHAM THEATRE
C16   7 ROYAL. ^*4The latest from the pens and pianos of Julian Slade and
C16   8 Dorothy Reynolds is *"Wildest Dreams,**" due to open at the Vaudeville
C16   9 on August 3.
C16  10    |^*"Wildest Dreams**" *0is set in Nelderham, a country town in
C16  11 which a girl called Carol, just out of school, meets Mark, a young
C16  12 reporter sent to write up in satirical terms the town's reactions to
C16  13 his newspaper's questionnaire. ^As in *"Salad Days,**" the young
C16  14 couple have personality and purpose. ^Carol, though monosyllabic,
C16  15 rebellious and scruffy in the manner of some of the modern young, has
C16  16 a strong vision of her character and a determination to preserve it in
C16  17 the teeth of her aunt's interference. ^And Mark believes he has it in
C16  18 him to convert a whole country town.
C16  19    |^Anna Dawson plays the girl. ^Now 24, she got her first theatrical
C16  20 chance in a previous Slade-Reynolds musical, *"Free as Air,**" and,
C16  21 apart from pantomime and repertory experience, has been in
C16  22 *"Marigold**" at the Savoy. ^John Baddeley, who partners her as Mark,
C16  23 was also in *"Free as Air,**" as well as *"Follow That Girl.**" ^Aged
C16  24 27, he is an actor whose experience has varied from repertory at
C16  25 Birmingham, Sheffield, the Bristol Old Vic and Guildford to a tour in
C16  26 *"The Lilac Domino.**"
C16  27    |^With Julian Slade at the piano, Miss Reynolds plays the
C16  28 domineering aunt, who meets a composer who tries to sing his own songs
C16  29 (Angus Mackay*- in private life Miss Reynold's husband). ^The musical
C16  30 numbers are by Basil Pattison, and decor by Brian Currah, who recently
C16  31 designed for *"The Caretaker.**"
C16  32    |^*6PLAYHOUSE: ^*0Third week of *4*"Second Post,**" *0a revue of 28
C16  33 items by various authors, produced by Val May before he leaves for
C16  34 Bristol Old Vic. ^Targets range from the familiar skits on *"Beat the
C16  35 Clock**" and *"The Archers**" to the offbeat, with a cast of thirteen
C16  36 topped by Rhoda Lewis and Arthur Blake.
C16  37 *<*4City Cinemas*>
C16  38    |^*0Following the same formula of a tearaway technique compounded
C16  39 of slapstick and *4{6double entendre}, *0the sequel to *"Dentist in
C16  40 the Chair**" is *4*"Dentist on the Job**" *0at the *6ABC *0and
C16  41 *6METROPOLE *0cinemas. ^In this, the manager of a firm putting out a
C16  42 new toothpaste (Eric Barker) gets a couple of dentists to endorse it.
C16  43 ^It seems a good opportunity for the Dean of King Alfred's Dental
C16  44 College (likewise Eric Barker) to unload a brace of recently graduated
C16  45 deadheads, Bob Monkhouse and Ronnie Stevens.
C16  46    |^With dental mechanic Kenneth Connor, just out of gaol, they dream
C16  47 up schemes to promote the new paste. ^In the process they meet Shirley
C16  48 Eaton*- in a bubble bath on to which they turn a wind machine.
C16  49    |^Their biggest achievement, however, is when they hear that the
C16  50 Americans are launching a satellite which will broadcast a tape
C16  51 recording of goodwill for seven years. ^Now if a tape extolling the
C16  52 virtues of their toothpaste could be substituted...?
C16  53    |^Some hardworking man at the Disney studios has counted the spots
C16  54 on the Dalmatians in *4*"One Hundred and One Dalmatians**" *0at the
C16  55 *6ODEON. ^*0Each dog wears 32 to 72 spots, depending on which side is
C16  56 exposed to the viewer*- which accounts for 6,469,952 dancing spots.
C16  57 ^Which is only right and proper in a 4,000,000-dollar production
C16  58 involving 800 miles of drawings, 1,000 colours and 800 tons of paint.
C16  59    |^The most sophisticated to date of Disney's 53 features, *4*"One
C16  60 Hundred and One Dalmatians,**" *0brings together a human bachelor who
C16  61 owns a Dalmatian called Pongo and a shapely girl who owns one called
C16  62 Perdita. ^It is love at first sight, marriage at first opportunity,
C16  63 and soon fifteen beautiful puppies are born (to the Dalmatians, that
C16  64 is). ^But enter a villainess, Cruella De Vil, rich, cunning and with a
C16  65 passion for coats made of Dalmatian hides. ^She dognaps the pups and
C16  66 puts them with 101 others in a haunted old English manor house.
C16  67 ^Scotland Yard is baffled, but the dogs of London get on to the scent.
C16  68    |^With *4*"Gunlight at Sandoval,**" *0\0Tech. Texas Ranger Tom
C16  69 Tryon avenges death of friend killed trying to prevent bank hold-up.
C16  70 ^Dan Duryea.
C16  71    |^It was inevitable that Peter Ustinov should join the exclusive
C16  72 four-star club by writing, producing, directing and starring in one
C16  73 film. ^In *4*"Romanoff and Juliet,**" *0at the *6GAUMONT, *0he is
C16  74 literally a four-star general, not to mention also being President and
C16  75 {0UN} representative of the tiny country of Concordia, so small that
C16  76 even {0UN} colleagues can't locate it on the map. ^But the President
C16  77 wants to keep it that way, knowing that when it is discovered it will
C16  78 be either swamped with aid or blown *2OFF *0the map. ^Love and
C16  79 laughter, he feels, engender more happiness than politics or
C16  80 philanthropy.
C16  81    |^At a meeting of the United Nations he causes pandemonium by
C16  82 abstaining on an important vote involving an amendment to an amendment
C16  83 to an amendment, and on his return to Concordia becomes the target for
C16  84 the Russian ambassador, Romanoff, and the American ambassador,
C16  85 Moulsworth, both of whom insist on giving his country aid. ^Keeping a
C16  86 wary eye on each other, they woo Concordia*- while their respective
C16  87 offspring (John Gavin and Sandra Dee) are breaking down international
C16  88 barriers with a spot of wooing themselves. ^Technicolor.
C16  89    |^With *"A Date with Death,**" Gerald Mohr tracks policeman's
C16  90 killer.
C16  91    |^In the roaring expansion of the West a century ago, no town is
C16  92 more terrorised than *4*"Warlock**" (*6ELITE) *0where the people have
C16  93 been reduced to a handful of cowardly citizens as one sheriff after
C16  94 another is murdered or run out of town in the monthly beat-up the
C16  95 place receives from a bunch of cowboys from the San Pablo ranch. ^The
C16  96 brawlers, drinkers and killers include Richard Widmark, who has grown
C16  97 to hate these descents on the defenceless town since he took part in
C16  98 the massacre of harmless Mexicans. ^In desperation of ever getting a
C16  99 new sheriff who can protect them by law, the townsfolk hire Henry
C16 100 Fonda who will be able to use his fast gunplay and be above the law.
C16 101 ^Accompanied by crippled gambler Anthony Quinn, the new Marshal
C16 102 arrives and makes his mark. ^Sickened by all the lawless killing,
C16 103 Widmark throws in his lot with him. ^Dorothy Malone. ^CinemaScope,
C16 104 \0Tech.
C16 105    |^With *4*"Between Heaven and Hell,**" *0CinemaScope, Terry Moore
C16 106 feels that the feudal attitude husband Robert Wagner has towards the
C16 107 sharecroppers on his land will one day cause trouble. ^And when he is
C16 108 called into the army, it does.
C16 109    |^*6MECHANICS: ^*4*"There Was a Crooked Man.**" ^*0Ex army
C16 110 explosives expert Norman Wisdom is persuaded to join gang of
C16 111 safecrackers by the argument that if there weren't any criminals, all
C16 112 the clergymen, police and probation officers would be out of work.
C16 113 ^After a few successes, the gang disguise themselves as American army
C16 114 officers and work a gigantic swindle by blowing up an entire town.
C16 115 ^Susannah York. ^Alfred Marks.
C16 116    |^With *4*"Trapeze,**" *0crippled and embittered by a fall, circus
C16 117 star Burt Lancaster refuses to teach American acrobat Tony Curtis the
C16 118 dangerous triple somersault. ^Whirling round in the circus tent, they
C16 119 solve an emotional triangle involving Gina Lollobrigida.
C16 120    |^In Japan, apparently, they play something called *4*"The Cola
C16 121 Game,**" *0described at the *6SCALA. ^*0A circle of boys and girls
C16 122 place a Coca-Cola bottle on its side and spin it. ^When it stops, the
C16 123 couple to whom it points must make love in front of the others which
C16 124 explains why Coca-Cola sells very well in Japan. ^A pretty young co-ed
C16 125 named Junko gets into the game and thus meets a youngster with whom
C16 126 she has an affair. ^Discovering herself pregnant she has an abortion,
C16 127 but her lover couldn't care less and goes off on a ski-ing trip with
C16 128 the girl in the next apartment. ^Junko moves out of his flat and goes
C16 129 to live with a young architect whom she respects greatly and who feels
C16 130 sorry for her. ^In this way, it says here, *"she experiences the true
C16 131 meaning of love and happiness.**" ^X-certificate.
C16 132    |^Phillipe Lemarre has been the scapegoat of some doubtful pals in
C16 133 *4*"{Les Clandestines}**" *0at the *6MOULIN ROUGE. ^*0Sent to gaol for
C16 134 two years, he has quixotically, refused to clear himself by betraying
C16 135 his colleagues, and, when he gets out, finds his grandfather has been
C16 136 driven to suicide by a bunch of crooks. ^Now there is a thriving
C16 137 call-girl racket operating from the old man's apartment which they
C16 138 have taken over. ^With the help of blonde mannequin Nicole Courcel,
C16 139 the released prisoner pieces the story together.
C16 140    |^With *4*"The Parasites,**" *0Jeanne Moreau is a streetgirl
C16 141 forever searching for real love in Montmartre. ^When her protector is
C16 142 betrayed to the police she gets entangled with other shadowy creatures
C16 143 of the underworld. ^Both films X-certificate.
C16 144 *<*4The Post review of next week's shows*>
C16 145 *<*6JESSIE AND RALPH TWINKLE AGAIN*>
C16 146    |^TWO *4veterans of the twenties and thirties*- one remembered for
C16 147 her vivacity in musicals, and the other for his assinities **[SIC**]
C16 148 in a series of world famous farces*- visit Nottingham next week as a
C16 149 team. ^Jessie Matthews and Ralph Lynn come to the *6THEATRE ROYAL *4in
C16 150 a farce called *"Port in a Storm**" by Rex Howard Arundel.
C16 151    |^*0The ex *"Cochran young lady**" and the monocled *"ass**" of so
C16 152 many pieces of Ben Travers at the Aldwych are cast respectively as a
C16 153 crime novelist and her old flame. ^She hides him at home when he is on
C16 154 the run from his virago of a wife until she discovers that she is also
C16 155 harbouring a stolen diamond necklace. ^The writer has a house staff of
C16 156 ex-convicts to keep her in touch with the way of the underworld, and
C16 157 the farce's ingredients include a long-lost son, a runaway secretary
C16 158 and a lock-picking butler. ^The play is on its pre-London tour.
C16 159    |^Jessie Matthews made her first appearance on the stage in 1917
C16 160 when she was ten years old, and took to revue five years later. ^She
C16 161 made her first hit while still in her teens, understudying Gertrude
C16 162 Lawrence in America, and when she came back to London she twinkled for
C16 163 many years as {0C. B.} Cochran's brightest discoveries **[SIC**] in
C16 164 shows that ranged from *"This Year of Grace**" and *"One Damn Thing
C16 165 After Another**" to the famous *"Evergreen**" which, as well as being
C16 166 made into a film, ran for two years. ^Miss Matthews last came to the
C16 167 Nottingham Theatre Royal in 1955 when she and her daughter Katie
C16 168 played in Coward's *"Private Lives.**"
C16 169 *<*6NEARLY 80*>
C16 170    |^*0Now a lively 79, Ralph Lynn has been going strong on the stage
C16 171 since 1900 (when he appeared in *"King of Terrors**" at Wigan), and
C16 172 about 1925 was up to his debonair tricks at the old repertory theatre
C16 173 in Hyson Green, Nottingham, when the Grand was a going concern. ^He,
C16 174 Tom Walls and Robertson Hare made the name of the Aldwych synonymous
C16 175 with farce through such classics of foolery as *"Cuckoo in the
C16 176 Nest,**" *"Thark**" and *"Rookery Nook.**"
C16 177    |^\0Mr. Lynn and his bald sparring partner appeared at the Theatre
C16 178 Royal in 1952 in the premiere of a later Ben Travers farce, *"Wild
C16 179 Horses.**" ^They were together again two years later in Peter Jones's
C16 180 *"The Party Spirit.**" ^\0Mr. (*"Oh, calamity!**") Hare can be seen
C16 181 again in Nottingham, by the way, on October 16, when he plays in the
C16 182 tour of *"The Bride Come **[SIC**] Back**" with Jack Hulbert and
C16 183 Cicely Courtneidge.
C16 184    |^*6PLAYHOUSE: ^*0Fourth and positively final week of the revue
C16 185 *4*"Second Post**" *0twenty-eight items of song, sketch and dance by
C16 186 various authors. ^Two of them have just been sold for the new West End
C16 187 revue *"The Lord Chamberlain Regrets**"*- *"Lady of the Camellias,**"
C16 188 in which Rhoda Lewis sings *1{6a la} *0Dietrich, and *"Cries of Old
C16 189 London**" involving three decrepit bellringers and a stomach-heaving
C16 190 *"sick**" joke.
C16 191 *<*4City Cinemas*>
C16 192    |^*0A ten-year-old opus by Alfred Hitchcock is re-issued at the
C16 193 *6ABC *0and *6METROPOLE*- *0his *4*"Strangers on a Train.**" ^*0A long
C16 194 train journey often prompts complete strangers to strike up a casual
C16 195 conversation. ^They will talk about the weather, politics or crime.
C16 196 ^But it's rare for two people to talk about murder on a personal
C16 197 level.
C16 198 *# 2013
C17   1 **[088 TEXT C17**]
C17   2 *<*6FILM PAGE*>
C17   3 *<*4by \0F. Leslie Winters*>
C17   4 *<Hollywood decides that 1961 won't be a Super Colossal year*>
C17   5    |^H*2AVING *0looked back on 1960 last week, it is now time to think
C17   6 of 1961 and the films it will bring.
C17   7    |^As far as Hollywood activities go, my correspondent there says
C17   8 that, after preliminary box-office results of *"The Alamo**" and
C17   9 *"Spartacus,**" there is a big drop in super-colossal productions and
C17  10 emphasis trends to intimate little pictures with Sex as the big motif.
C17  11 ^This follows the invasion of European films in America.
C17  12    |^Here I have selected 25 coming British films which look promising
C17  13 of their types.
C17  14    |^A picture which must strictly be regarded as American yet which
C17  15 has a British star and director is *"Lawrence of Arabia,**" with Peter
C17  16 O'Toole and made by David *"River Kwai**" Lean. Our own Michael
C17  17 Anderson has also made the drama-thriller *"The Naked Edge**" with
C17  18 American Gary Cooper and British/ {0U.S.} Deborah Kerr. ^Peter
C17  19 Finch, for whom 1960 was triumphant, will be seen in a political drama
C17  20 *"No Love for Johnnie,**" while Peter Sellers stars and directs a big
C17  21 business drama *"\0Mr. Topaze.**"
C17  22 *<*6SOPHISTICATED*>
C17  23    |^*0Richard Todd will be seen in a sophisticated comedy and a war
C17  24 drama*- *"Don't Bother to Knock**" and *"The Long and the Short and
C17  25 the Tall.**"
C17  26    |^Another star who is also directing is Nigel Patrick and his film
C17  27 is *"*4Johnny Nobody,**" *0with Aldo Ray and Yvonne Mitchell as well.
C17  28 ^We also have such extremes as *"*4Carry On Regardless,**" *0with a
C17  29 cast you could pretty well guess, and *"*4Macbeth,**" *0with Maurice
C17  30 Evans and Judith Anderson.
C17  31    |^Stanley Baker will be on the wrong side of the law for a change
C17  32 in *"*4The Criminal,**" *0and so will Michael Craig in *"*4Payroll.**"
C17  33 ^*0Crime will also be the theme of *"*4Frightened City,**" *0with John
C17  34 Gregson and Herbert Lom*- a vice \6*1expose.
C17  35    |^*0Horror plus science fiction are scheduled with *"*4The Children
C17  36 of Light**" *0(uncast) and the film of the {0TV} success
C17  37 *"*4Quatermass and the Pit,**" *0which would be unthinkable without
C17  38 Andre Morell. ^*"*4The Phantom of the Opera**" *0(once Lon Chaney's
C17  39 triumph) will also be remade over here*- the third edition, I think.
C17  40    |^Back to comedies*- Leslie Phillips, James Robertson Justice and
C17  41 Eric Sykes combine with *"*4Very Important Person**"; *0Jimmy Edwards
C17  42 will give us *"*4Nearly a Nasty Accident**"; *0Ian Carmichael and
C17  43 Janette Scott co-star in *"*4Double Bunk,**" *0and Terry-Thomas will
C17  44 be with Janette for *"*4His and Hers.**"
C17  45 *<*6HEART-THROB*>
C17  46    |^*0There is much prophecy that the new heart-throb of the year
C17  47 will be Warren Beatty, over here to star with Vivien Leigh in a sordid
C17  48 drama called *"*4The Roman Spring of \0Mrs. Stone.**" ^*0Warren is
C17  49 engaged to Joan Collins. ^Another American here is Susan Strasberg, to
C17  50 co-star with Ronald Lewis and Ann Todd in a thriller, *"*4Taste of
C17  51 Fear.**"
C17  52    |^*0British George Sanders stays on to co-star with Peter Cushing
C17  53 in *"*4Time of the Fire.**" ^*0To end with another contrast, we shall
C17  54 have Max Bygraves in a serious film about slum school life, *"*4Spare
C17  55 the Rod,**" *0and Virginia McKenna returning to the screen for a tense
C17  56 drama set in Sweden*- *"*4Two Living, One Dead,**" *0in which she will
C17  57 co-star with husband Bill Travers.
C17  58 *<*4This is D-Day*- in four different versions*>
C17  59    |^N*2O *0one seems to know if we are going to have two major films
C17  60 about D-Day or not. ^Certainly Howarth's book *"Dawn of D-Day**" has
C17  61 been purchased for filming. ^But Darryl Zanuck is first with details
C17  62 about his *"Longest Day,**" by Cornelius Ryan. ^He will start
C17  63 production on June 6 on the original Omaha beach, Normandy, on
C17  64 sequences to cost as much as an average minor epic.
C17  65    |^The story is in four parts, each with its own director, telling
C17  66 the same story from the British, American, French and German points of
C17  67 view. ^I would like Monty's view of Zanuck's statement: *"^The theme
C17  68 will be the stupidity of war. ^The Allies made every conceivable
C17  69 physical mistake but, fortunately for us, the Germans made more.
C17  70 ^Unbelievable blunders on both sides took place.**" ^How the Americans
C17  71 love to debunk!
C17  72    |
C17  73    |^*6A *2PITY *0this country hasn't anything comparable with the
C17  74 Hollywood Motion Picture Museum. ^A big new building is now planned to
C17  75 house nearly two million pounds worth of equipment dating to the
C17  76 pioneer days. ^It will be built opposite the Hollywood Bowl (famous
C17  77 arena and scene of spectacles, music and pageantry) and the American
C17  78 film industry is to lay out *+350,000 on exhibits and *+180,000 on
C17  79 equipping sound stages for demonstrations of film production.
C17  80 *<*6VERSATILE JOE*>
C17  81 *<*0by *2JOHN GORDON*>
C17  82    |^*6J*2OE BROWN, *0former white-haired comedian of the {0ITV}
C17  83 beat show *"Wham,**" has really hit a gusher. ^Just before starting
C17  84 out on a tour of one-nighters*- in West Bromwich this week*- he
C17  85 recorded two numbers, *"Shine**" and *"The Switch**" (Pye 7N15322).
C17  86 ^On the top half he chants away happily; the backer is purely
C17  87 instrumental.
C17  88    |^This splendid disc proves Joe's versatility, which is going to
C17  89 make him a top star this year*- you'll see.
C17  90    |
C17  91    |^Bill Bramwell's *"Candid Camera Theme**" (Decca F11309) is a most
C17  92 unusual combination of guitar, piccolo and gimmick vocal. ^The other
C17  93 half, *"Frederika,**" brings a more orthodox musical combination into
C17  94 the picture with this slow, almost haunting, bluesy piece. ^Two good
C17  95 sides.
C17  96 *<*6FILM PAGE*>
C17  97 *<*4by \0F. Leslie Winters*>
C17  98 *<The man with a bent halo*>
C17  99 *<BUT THE LIFE, LOVES AND MUSIC OF FRANZ LISZT ADD UP TO A CINEMATIC
C17 100 TREAT*>
C17 101    |^T*2HEY *0say (and I don't quite know who *"they**" are) that
C17 102 audiences won't accept so eagerly these days the sort of films which
C17 103 were tremendously successful about 15 to 20 years ago.
C17 104    |^I have heard film executives express doubts whether a *"Seventh
C17 105 Veil**" type of theme would capture people's fancy today in the
C17 106 extraordinary way it once did.
C17 107    |^Many of you will have a warm regard for that immensely popular
C17 108 *"Song to Remember,**" in which Cornel Wilde played Chopin*- made in
C17 109 wartime and which captured people's hearts as well as ears.
C17 110 *<*6SHUNNED?*>
C17 111    |^*0Can this sort of success be repeated in these times? ^Or does a
C17 112 mixture of costume, classical music and courtly manner seem likely to
C17 113 be shunned by audiences said to be horror and crime addicts?
C17 114    |^I should be sorry to think so, for *"Song Without End,**" which
C17 115 tells some of the story of Franz Liszt, is a film worth going to for
C17 116 its music, its decor, its acting, and its elegance.
C17 117    |^Those classical composers of the great musical era are
C17 118 certainties for the script-writers. ^Their private lives, mainly, were
C17 119 as wildly romantic and as full of drama as any novelist's inventions.
C17 120    |^Even so, there is usually a tendency to soften the outlines,
C17 121 polish up the bent haloes, and omit a few facts.
C17 122    |^On the whole, *"Song Without End**" is fairly accurate. ^It is
C17 123 marred by a few American accents and expressions, and is reticent
C17 124 about Liszt's long affair with a Russian princess. ^Despite the detail
C17 125 into which this part of the film goes, it doesn't even whisper the
C17 126 fact that they lived together for many years in a strange atmosphere
C17 127 of passion, piety and regret.
C17 128    |^But jarring moments are remarkably few in the two hours and ten
C17 129 minutes it takes to cover Liszt's career from the age of 26 until he
C17 130 went into a monastery.
C17 131    |^The film's inference at the end is that the composer has found
C17 132 peace and will never emerge again. ^In fact, he merely took a minor
C17 133 order and toured Europe as a white-haired and pretty gay old man.
C17 134    |^The picture also merely includes two women in his life (from the
C17 135 many who caught his eye)*- French Countess Marie, with whom he ran off
C17 136 to Chamonix and whom he deserts to start another concert tour,
C17 137 simultaneously with one roving eye on Russian Princess Carolyne
C17 138 Sayn-Wittgenstein. ^She has a jealous husband and the protection of
C17 139 the Czar*- formidable adversaries.
C17 140 *<*6FRUSTRATION*>
C17 141    |^*0The personal side of the story shows the frustration and
C17 142 bitterness of the discarded mistress, a beautiful piece of acting from
C17 143 France's Genevieve Page, and the passion-battling-religion of the
C17 144 entranced princess, played with the face of Ava Gardner and the
C17 145 coolness of a real princess by Capucine, lovely model with no acting
C17 146 experience before this.
C17 147    |^The musical side ranges from Chopin to Wagner, Beethoven to Bach,
C17 148 Handel, Mendelssohn, Verdi, and Schumann. ^All this played by Jorge
C17 149 Bolet, but magnificently co-ordinated with the hands of Dirk Bogarde,
C17 150 who makes of Liszt an irresponsible but rather lovable puppy-dog
C17 151 rather than a dare-devil, philandering genius.
C17 152    |^I do so hope that the pattern of entertainment has not changed so
C17 153 much that a worthy film of this type fails. ^Perhaps we shall be
C17 154 surprised and Birmingham's Odeon will be packed this week. ^It
C17 155 deserves to be.
C17 156 *<*4An experiment in the shadows*>
C17 157    |^I*2T *0is strange that a Hollywood actor should get the idea for
C17 158 a film in a New York students' loft on January 14, 1957, and a few
C17 159 months later, with money borrowed and money donated after a {0TV}
C17 160 interview, make this film in the streets of that city and then fail to
C17 161 find anyone in the United States who would show it. ^That is why John
C17 162 Cassavetes came to England to find someone who would take a risk on
C17 163 something new.
C17 164    |^It was the directors of newly-constructed British Lion, who have
C17 165 got faith in fresh faces, talent, ideas and letting people try them
C17 166 out, who saw *"Shadows**" one evening and immediately offered
C17 167 Cassavetes the money for world distribution rights. ^I feel sure they
C17 168 won't regret it, from the prestige or financial angles.
C17 169    |^This film, now at the Futurist, Birmingham, was made with a
C17 170 16\0mm camera in 42 days and nights in New York marquees, in disguised
C17 171 dust-bins, from trucks, in subway entrances and restaurant windows.
C17 172    |^For six weeks the actors, all unknown to the general public,
C17 173 lived together and discussed the story outline.
C17 174    |^Each fully understood the situations planned and the nature of
C17 175 the characters (which bear the same names as the actors), and when the
C17 176 camera started they just talked*- without a script, as the words came
C17 177 in their minds or were provoked by others.
C17 178    |^The result, if not completely satisfying (some scenes do appear a
C17 179 little contrived and tentatively scripted), is remarkable.
C17 180    |^There is a coloured girl who pretends to sophistication but is
C17 181 horrified at her seduction; her trumpet-playing brother who finally
C17 182 stops his aimless existence after a slum beat-up; the clash and inner
C17 183 concern of the colour problem. ^No one is very good or very bad.
C17 184    |^It may not be a film for everyone, but it is an experiment that
C17 185 almost comes off and is, undoubtedly, of importance in the technique
C17 186 of film-making.
C17 187 *<*6{0TV} TOPICS*>
C17 188 *<*4by *6ROBBIE ASHLEY*>
C17 189 *<*4Secrets of the *'Candid Camera**'*>
C17 190    |^S*2O *0often have I heard suggestions that *"Candid Camera**" is
C17 191 *"rigged**" that I decided to find out just how they go about
C17 192 eavesdropping on the public.
C17 193    |^An {0ABC} spokesman was quite adamant in refuting the charge of
C17 194 *"rigging**" of sequences and employing actors in the role of \0Mr.
C17 195 and \0Mrs. Public.
C17 196    |^The only professionals employed on the show are Jonathan Routh
C17 197 (its originator) and sometimes Bill Bramwell (the musical director).
C17 198 ^Obviously they are required to *"set up**" the victim.
C17 199 *<*6HIDDEN*>
C17 200    |^*0Cameras, in soundproof cabinets, are hidden behind curtains, in
C17 201 cupboards with the rear door left ajar; and for street scenes the
C17 202 camera often shoots through the windows of a plain van parked nearby.
C17 203    |^Tiny radio microphones are dotted all over the place*- Routh
C17 204 often wears a lapel microphone which only a person in the know could
C17 205 detect. ^An aerial runs down the trouser leg from the radio
C17 206 microphone, and the speech is picked up by a receiving aerial in the
C17 207 next room, under the counter, or just around the corner*- wherever the
C17 208 scene is set.
C17 209 *<*6SEQUENCES*>
C17 210    |^*0Several sequences are shot in one day. ^For instance, in a
C17 211 hardware shop Routh asked a woman to fill in a form to obtain a
C17 212 licence to buy saucepan patches. Later, still in the same shop, he
C17 213 began selling left-handed teacups to a gullible public.
C17 214    |^Thousands of feet of film are shot every week, and a tremendous
C17 215 amount is wasted. ^Sometimes a stunt does not come off; sometimes
C17 216 Routh is recognised; and often nothing at all happens.
C17 217 *# 2008
        **[END**]
