Agent Orange makes a deal

 and we know how that love match ended !

Unique Santa Rosa Firestorm Photo

Photo copyright : Emily Wood

From the Tubbs Firestorm in Northern California, this photo above.  The fires are still raging. Embers are falling, swept by the wind, for many miles around.   The fragment above landed on a house very near Coffey Park which was flattened, block after block  Everyone's seen Coffey Park before and after on TV, but this photo is unpublished til now. Credit the photographer !  This is professional quality work.  Someone, somewhere, once had the book, which is now dust. But the fragment speaks.  Enlarge the text, identify the book and imagine who the owner might have been.  A reminder that not everything is up in smoke.  

Pie in the sky, when you die

Long haired preachers come out every night

Try to tell you what's wrong and what's right

But when asked how ‘bout something to eat,

They will answer with voices so sweet

You will eat, bye and bye, in that glorious land above the sky, way up high

Work and pray, live on hay,

You'll get pie in the sky.

When you die. 

Natives and freedom - The Hurricane 1937

"A sense of honour in the South Seas is as about as silly as  a silk hat in a hurricane"  says Dr Kersaint to M. De Laage, the tyrannical governor of Manikura, a French colony in the South Pacific, who is "under the spell of honour and duty" and defines honour as the need to impose control on feckless natives. A ship arrives, bringing Mme De Laage, and Terangi, the First Mate, a born sailor who "kept hanging from the mast like a bird, with wings stretched for home".

The natives rush cheerfully aboard the ship to welcome the crew home, to the strains of Aloha Oe (read more about that song here). The natives, as the Doctor says, "are like birds who need to flock together in the breeze" The village celebrates the wedding of Terangi and Marama. Great shots of native girls in leis and Terangi's muscular bare chest.  Terangi and Marama set off in a dugout for an island honeymoon.  But Terangi smells a good wind: the ship sets sails again. In Tahiti, Ternagi and his friends are in a bar with loose women who smoke. Terangi plays with a mechanical hula doll with childish delight.  "Get up when a white man tells you!" sneers a drunk. Ternagi fells him with one blow.

But in colonies, fighting back is insurrection. The Hurricane's subtext was dangerous. Setting the movie in a French colony disguised the fact that the same brutal rules applied elsewhere, including Hawaii.   Or in the mainland US, for that matter.

Terangi is imprisoned. Being a free spirit, he keeps escaping and his sentence gets extended.   "Sixteen years in a cell with rats as companions".in chains, being whipped, doing hard labour., but Terangi remains unbroken.  He escapes again from maximum security, but inadvertently kills a guard. He steals a canoe and paddles 600 miles back to Manakura, navigating by the winds, braving storms at sea.  The local Priest takes him in secrecy to an island, where he's reunited with Marama and their child.

Back in Manakura, a hurricane is building up.  "Imagine Paris", says Mme De Laage, "civilizations don't do well in a hurricane"   The natives are restless : they know something, they're smiling.  Terangi's a legend, a symbol of freedom. De Laage finds out where he's hidden and sets off to capture him.  "You'll find a stronger authority than me in that storm!" cries the Priest. The hurricane hits Manakura.  People take shelter in the church, whose bells won't stop ringing in the wind. Fabulous cinematography - sheets of rain, flying debris, palm trees crashing, pounding waves. I've been in hurricanes. When I first saw this film on TV, it seemed realistic enough (to a kid).  

Terangi appears in a boat and the priest tells him to save those he can, who include Mme De Laage.  Eventually the church bell falls silent. But by then the church has been flattened, the priest and most of his parishioners killed. Terangi and his family wash up on a beach and light a fire. M. De Laage comes and rescues his wife. Terangi and his family escape in a war canoe.  De Laage spots it in the distance from his ship. "It's just debris" says his wife.

Given that The Hurricane was made in 1937, the director John Ford and producer Samuel Goldwyn really couldn't take risks with the authorities, so they probably needed to play up the pseudo-religious moralizing, which is pretty turgid. Overlook that, though, and the movie is daringly radical. It challenges racism outright, and the idea of rigid, relentless power structures.  Although  Ternagi and Marama are acted by white people in  brownface (Jon Hall and Dorothy Lamour) and the characters they play are cardboard, the stereotypes aren't negative.  Compare The Hurricane to Typhoon, the 1940 Paramount movie shot in (then) glorious Technicolor and maximum special effects. There, the natives are no more than scenery and Dorothy Lamour's part serves only to offer glimpses of her body. Typhoon is  B movie crime flick set in the tropics. The Hurricane is much more, and would have been even better had Hollywood, and the West in general, been ready for something stronger.

7/7/37 - a world event unmarked in the west

7th July 1937 - 80 years since the  start of the Japanese invasion of China.  The "Marco Polo Bridge Incident or 七七事變 is a hugely important anniversary, prelude to the massacre of Nanjing, the conquest of Shanghai and the war in the Pacific.  Luguo Bridge (as it's known in Chinese) was strategic because it's so close to Beijing, the symbol capital, though the seat of government had been moved to Nanjing by the Nationalists just ten years before.  Manchuria  was invaded in 1931, but 7/7/37 was an attack on the core of the nation.  Chinese from all regions took part in the resistance in the North. Eventually, the war moved South, too, precipitating one of the largest mass population upheavals in world history. No-one in China remained unaffected.  Effectively 7/7/37 marked the start of a cataclysm that's engulfed China for decades, its repercussions still being faced today. Mao and the Communist Party, for starters. To understand the present, it is absolutely essential to understand the past, and from the perspective of those who experienced it.  Nowadays it's fashionable to think in simplistic terms. There are some who'd even deny the impact of the Opium Wars. Imagine the situation reversed.  But the present doesn't exist in a vacuum. Identity is reshaped, distorted and revised, but the broader the perspective, the less likelihood of getting boxed into corners. Polarization is the enemy of truth.  Thus the more we learn, the better we can interpret.

Hubris and Nemesis

Nemesis chiding Icarus for hubris - Géricault

Race, Religion and Whaling : Down to the Sea in Ships

Down to the Sea in Ships (1922, Elmer Clifton) is famous because it made Clara Bow a star, but it's even more interesting as a semi-historical document.  It's also a surprisngly subversive commentary on race, religion and hypocrisy.

When this film was made whaling in tall ships was still an important industry, and many of the shots are authentic, shot with local whalers, who still practised their trade. This film is much more than a movie. The plot is melodrama, but plays out against a background which would be impossible to replicate today.  Though the story is set in the mid-nineteenth century (the Gold Rush is news), those times were living memory to many people 100 years ago. Just as Nosferatu (1921 - read more here) depicts a Germany of the recent past which was soon to vanish, So when we look at the whalers in their small boats, struggling with the ocean, we aren't watching stunt men, but men who really did know how to ride the waves.  There are shots where we can see whole herds of whales, and porpoises, swimming freely. Possibly not so easy to envisage today.  Down to the Sea in Ships is like a last, loving snapshot of a world we might reconstruct but can never experience. The best scenes, shot on the high seas, are grainy and not posed for dramatic effect, but they were made when motion picture technology was barely 25 years old.  Special credits then, to the two photographers, A G Penrod and Paul H Allen, "who, in small boats, stood by their cameras, at the risk of their lives, to film the fighting whales".  But there's even more to this film than meets the eye: its sub-texts on social issues are way ahead of its time. 

Down to the Sea in Ships was made by "The Whaling Film Corporation", specially set up for the purpose and shot in New Bedford, Massachusetts, where the premiere took place. At the time, cinema wasn't dominated by big studios but by small independents, so this film is also a record of a film making model completely different to Hollywood, much closer to European art film of the period.  The director/producer was Elmer Clifton (1890-1949) who worked with D W Griffith, though in this film he shows a very different approach to movie-making.  

This film is not studio spectacular but direct engagement with Nature.  Nowadays there'd be warnings that "no real animals were harmed in filming". Not so in 1922. The massive sperm whale the whalers kill was probably a real whale.  No way the technology of the time was fancy enough to fake a whale like this. It fights back, flipping over one of the boats. The men fall into the sea but look as though they've done that before.  When the whale pulls three boats and their crews (weighing 6000 tons the subtitles tell us) the whale wasn't acting.  There are shots of blubber being stripped off the carcass, buckets filled with sperm and so on, lovingly captured in detail.  Presumably that's what happened : the whalers had to make a living and weren't paid much by the film company.  So if the filming is grainy, and the shots unposed, without the special effects we expect today, we shouldn't complain.  Although some scenes are clearly staged, technology of the time wasn't advanced enough to fake all that we see. The whaling ship, with three masts and nine sails, was almost certainly authentic. As the credits say "The brawny boatsteerer still throws the hand harpoon".  Though the hero is cast as boatsteerer, the man doing the job was evidently the real thing. 

It's interesting, then, hat the close knit community depicted is staunchly Quaker, though Quakers eschew killing.  I had a hard time squaring that with hunting whales almost to extinction, but I guess that's because we live in more enlightened times and don't depend on whales for fuel, bones and oil.  Quakers were whalers for economic reasons.  Captain Morgan is a retired whaleman, ramrod straight and unbending, and rich.  A bit of a tyrant too, who insists his daughter Patience cannot marry outside the faith or profession.  He's so uptight he complains that Patience's wedding shawl is "gay" because it has a fringe.  Being pig-headed is his downfall, though he doesn't live to find out.  For he's easily fooled.  Two men plot to steal his ships. One is Finner, a ne'er do well, the other is Siggs, from a "nearby city".

Siggs is seen dressed in Chinese clothes with Chinese antiques.  "You're almost white" says Finner.   Down to the sea in Ships is a whole lot less innocent than you'd expect.  Although race laws prevailed in the United States and elsewhere, not everyone was racist. Please see my piece  Broken Blossoms : Racist reversal the 1919  film by D W Griffith, Clifton's mentor, which subverts racist stereotypes and was banned in British colonies for fifty years as a result.  Griffith's Birth of a Nation presented the KKK in a good light, demeaning their victims.  But Clifton, who never made it big in Hollywood,  went on to make low-budget independent movies on difficult social issues. As in Broken Blossoms, and other films on race relations like The Cheat : racism and dishonesty (read more here)  fiendish orientals are defined as sex-obsessed maniacs, lusting for white women. The actor playing Siggs leers and grimaces, like a masked demon.  All Siggs has to do to pass as Quaker is wear a Quaker hat and talk thee and thou.  Is he mixed race, (in the 1850's) or is his race a ruse to justify titilliation? .And, in this film,  Finner is even more of a lecher, salivating over Dot,  Morgan's pre-pubescent  orphan granddaughter.  Later he attempts to rape her. (Dot and Finner in the photo below)

Dot is played by Clara Bow then aged 16 and chubby faced.  Captain Morgan cannot understand Dot, who was found floating on a raft when her parents' ship,went down.  Maybe she's not his at all.  She's a forceful whirlwind of a girl, more tomboy than lady, who hangs out with the labourers at the copper works and shamelessly pulls Jimmy's newly grown whiskers. Grandad grew rich from killing animals. Dot confronts men who tease a dog. She gets into fights. Eventually, she dresses as a boy to run off to sea when Jimmy signs on as a whaler.  Bow plays the part so well that she steals the show: the other actors are wooden in comparison.  And what a part it is, so unusual and so daring for its time.  Her more famous It Girl roles are tame stereotypes in comparison.

Patience is a wimp, who still plays with dolls, though she's at least in her 20's.  Siggs prevails on Captain Morgan, who,lets him court Patience. But Dexter, the Boy Next Door, returns from college and he and Patience fall in love. Finner gets Dexter shanghai'd on a whaling ship. Unfortunate term, given the racism in the depiction of Siggs, but a reminder that white men got screwed by a brutal system too.   Finner kills the master of the ship and takes control.  Dot, dressed as a cabin boy defends Jimmy when Finner fights him, and reveal she's a girl.  Finner gets caught molesting her and is locked in a cage. Dexter ends up becoming Boatsteerer, having earned the respect of the crew.  Having caught the big sperm whale (more innuemdo) the ship sails back to New Bedford. That very day, Patience is marrying Siggs, having promised her Dad on his deathbed to do so.  Dexter runs through a thunderstorm to the church, smashing a window, disrupting the ceremony and the decorum of Quaker propriety. Love prevails!  Next year Patience has a baby instead of a doll, and Dot cavorts in a flower strewn meadow with Jimmy. Along the way we see other vignettes of "real" life, like the Black ex-slaves of the Sea Islands, and Tacoma, Patience's First Nation maid, with an uncredited actress who clearly isn't white, and is dressed in Missionary Indian costume.

Cold Nights - a refugee saga

Cold Nights (寒夜) a novel from 1947 by Ba Chin (巴金) (1909-2005) describes the impact of the biggest mass migration in modern history, when tens of millions of  refugees trekked across China, refusing to remain under Japanese occupation, a saga of human endurance that needs to be appreciated in the west.  Ba Chin's famous trilogy Family, Spring and Autumn (1933-40) is a classic of modern Chinese literature, confronting the injustices of traditional feudal society.  Given the background, Cold Nights  is equally panoramic, though the family in this case is small.  Wong Man Suen  and Tsang Shu San are modern, progressive-thinking intellectuals who went to university and might have had careers ahead, had the war not intervened. Cold Nights is even bleaker than the Family Trilogy since it doesn't conclude with hope. Though Cold Nights is set in Chongqing, the seat of Free China, it was made into a Cantonese movie in 1955 by a cast and crew who were themselves refugees, who suffered similar traumas first hand.  Not at all a typical "war movie".  Tsang Shu San is played by Pak Yin, (1920-1987) while Wong is played by Ng Chor Fan (1910-1993) who in real life was the leader of the refugee film community exiled from Hong Kong. 

The film begins with an air raid, sirens screaming, people running terrified through crowed streets, shells dropping all round. Chongqing was subject to the most severe aerial bombardment, not surpassed until Germany and Japan were flattened a few years later, and the targets were civilian.  Wong Man Suen realizes that the bombs have hit his home, and rushes home to find the house empty.  Hundreds have been killed, but luckily his mother and son have escaped.  A flashback to the past : a much younger Wong wakes, alone in bed. A letter arrives. It's from his wife Shu San. After seven years of marriage, she's leaving him.  He thinks back still earlier, when he, she and their friends Tang Pak Ching and Mok Man Ying were college students, both couples deeply in love. They graduated, but while Wong was buying a wedding ring for Shu San, the city of Hangzhou was bombed. In wartime conditions, it took them months to travel back to Wong's home. Their son was born en route.  But Wong's mother was furious. Wong phones his wife at the bank where she works.  They meet in a smart café, where the windows are taped up for safety in bomb blasts.  "I'll have tea" he asks, "I'll have coffee" says she. The reason she's leaving is the way his mother has treated her.  "And you", she adds "have been ground down by her, too".  In the soundtrack we hear the song On the Songhua River, which refers to war, refugees and social disruption (Read more about the song here)

Wong meets up with his old university friend, Tang Pak Ching, also a refugee. Tang's wife had a miscarriage but couldn't get to hospital when the streets were blocked in an air raid. "She held my hand and cried my name", he sobs, And then she died. "This war, it's so cruel". The four college friends from former days are now three. Wong starts drinking. Shu Shan is disgusted that he's fallen so low.  She carries him home, though, but his mother blames her. In his delirium, Wong cries "I love you, Shu San, don't leave me". He's becoming ill (tuberculosis). She loves him, too, so she stays but his mother is worse than ever.  Shu Shan's still working at the bank - she's the breadwinner - and her boss wants her to move with him to Lanchow.  She tells him no, but Wong, not realizing that the boss has ulterior motives, urges her to go.  He goes back to his old office, but his colleagues treat him as a pariah because he's infectious. "But we've been friends five years" he cries. A friend arrives with some money his friends have raised as a gift. But he's been fired by the boss.  "In wartime, that's how things are" explains the friend.  But mother flies in a rage. Wong, in his grief, blames himself. He loves Shu San but has failed her. He's also failed his mum, who put him through school and looks after him and his child.

Wong gives Shu San a wedding ring - as he wanted to do years earlier, before things went wrong.  Ironically, she's leaving in the morning. She's brought a huge sum of money for medical bills, which she's got from her boss . She's resolved to move, though her heart is not in it.  She tells Wong it's only a short separation but he knows better. ""I will return, in a year, or two, or three, but I will return". "And I will wait", he adds. In the dawn, they part. They look at their child, sleeping beside grandma. "Tell her I don't hold a grudge". A tear rolls from the old mother's eyes.

Although it's cold and Wong is sick, he goes out, to the café where he and Shu San had been together. "I'll have tea" he tells the waiter "and a coffee, for her".  But there's no-one there. The Songhua River song is heard again, quietly.  Another air raid. We see fighter planes  anti-aircraft guns, wardens and refugees.  Wong sees his old friend Tang Pak Ching in the crowd, but his friend cries "Tang Pak Ching is dead". His mind has gone, maddened by grief.  Bombs rain down and Tang is killed before Wong's eyes.  Eventually, the newspapers announce, the war is over.  A big parade in the streets, with lanterns, drums, firecrackers  and a lion dance.  The procession passes Wong's house but by now he is so sick he's almost delirious.  He gasps "Shu San" and collapses.

A rickshaw arrives. Shu San has come home.  But a neighbour tells her that Wong died, on 3rd September - the day Peace was declared.  The neighbourhood buried him locally.  Shu San sits at Wong's grave sobbing. She's worn his ring all the time she was away "Why didn't you wait for me ?". It's now the 100th day since Wong's death, so grandmother and child have returned to the grave for ceremonies.  Forgiveness: all three will return to the native village.

Malice in the Palace - the mad rush to Starvania

So Brexit is Triggered ! off we go on a mad rush to Starvania.   A minority party with no MP's hijacks the Palace of Westminster and enforces an extremist agenda onto a government with the largest majority in living memory, which should in theory make it immune to intimidation.  So much for Parliamentary Democracy. Who needs it when cardboard heroes can lie their way to control ?  Effectively, London, the Home Counties and Scotland are disenfranchised.  The regions that fuel the economy are stifled and have to pay those who don't pay their way.  Who needs democracy when the media can manipulate "The People" ?  Malice in the Palace !  The prophetic title of a Three Stooges satire from 1949. Except this madness isn't funny. 

Queer Talk - Britten Pears love letters

Queer Talk : Homosexuality in Britten's Britain, an exhibition running until 28th October 2017, hosted, appropriately, at the Red House in Aldeburgh, where Benjamin Britten and Peter Pears lived together for much of their relationship of nearly 40 years.  Fifty years after the decriminalization of homosexuality in this country, it's hard to imagine how pervasive anti-gay attitudes once were, but remember we must, for intolerance is still around, and, in an increasingly bigoted world, growing once again. Even the slightest hint of scandal could destroy a man's career in those benighted days, but Britten and Pears were never intimidated.   They weren't the kind of people who'd do parades, but neither did they betray their nature.  By being themselves fairly open, they showed the world that gay men were part of society, deserving respect. With quiet courage and integrity they stood up for what they believed.

All his life, Britten opposed bullying.  At school, where he was apparently raped, he didn't like the system. He became a pacifist for similar reasons, having observed how  nations and political parties can bully each other. Unlike Tippett, who went to prison, Britten helped the anti-Nazi war effort by non-violent means.  He was blacklisted in the US, ironically by J Edgar Hoover, who may have been in the closet.  Was Hoover a model for John Claggart?  Please read my article Britten and the FBI : love match ? here . 

Far from being invisible, homosexuality was a sensitive issue, but publicly discussed.  The exhibition Queer Talk focuses on two extraordinary works that Britten created against a backdrop of widespread debate on homosexuality: the 1951 all-male opera Billy Budd  and the extended solo vocal work Canticle I ‘My beloved is mine and I am his’ (1947) an open declaration of Britten’s love for Pears. Also on display are letters by Alan Turing, manuscripts and edits of EM Forster’s homoerotic novel Maurice and photographs of Noël Coward and his long-term companion Graham Payn.

Please also read my article  "A Homosexual Story" : Gerald Finzi on Billy Budd  from five years ago. Billy Budd is a whole lot more than a "homosexual story" since it predicates on Captain Vere;'s moral and ethical dilemmas, so beware narrowing the interpretation of the opera. It's not really  about Billy but about Vere, who in many ways is Britten himself.  Incidentally, Finzi was no homophobe. By the standards of the time, he was an outsider too, being vegetarian, holistic and mystical.  

The love letters between Britten and Pears have been public for decades, and in 2016 were collected in a single volume and published in full.  Read more here.. Britten was a pack rat who saved everything, and in later years was acutely aware that his life would be scrutinized in great detail.  By saving the letters, Britten and Pears were making the statement that their love was not something to hide, but to cherish. A heart warming read for anyone, gay or straight.

Sacrifice of an Opera Singer

One of the finest Cantonese movies ever made, and one which deserves to be in the canon of world cinema, Parents Heart (父母心) starring Ma Tse Tsang  (,馬師曾) (1900-1962),  the paramount actor and opera singer of his era. As a young man, Ma was a megastar, galvanizing Cantonese opera, so significant that there's no equivalent in the west.   In Parents Heart, he plays a former opera star reduced to poverty by social change.  Watch this movie and learn a lot about the art of Cantonese opera, since performances are built into the narrative expanding the drama.  The film is also a study of Chinese values, but it's a universal story.  It's so sensitive, and so emotionally true that sometimes the intensity is hard to cope with, but its message is extraordinarily powerful. What keeps us going when life is too hard to bear ?  Love, art, aspiration and hope : utterly relevant for all.  Yet it's lost to western audiences, because it's not in English but needs an awareness of cultural background.

The title credits play out against a curtain on which two masks are placed, one smiling, one in tears : symbols familiar to all but here distinctively Chinese. Next we see neon signs : modern theatres and nightlife.  Opera has fallen on hard times, having to compete with movies and westernized entertainment.   The character Ma plays was once extremely popular but now he's reduced to playing in half empty, rundown theatres. Nonetheless, we're treated to a superlative performance -a masterclass in Cantonese rhythmic singing, a bit like Sprechstimme, but improvised and inventively spontaneous.  Listen to the phrasing patterns, and the imaginative variations on basic tunes.   Ma plays a scholar but suddenly breaks in to a march. "Quit fooling around" sings an actress "You're supposed to be singing"  Great as the performance is, the show is closing and the opera troupe breaking up.  So when Ma answers "These days, it's foreign things that count" you realize that his march isn't just improvisation but a cry of protest. Notice how the percussion clappers used to punctuate singing continue on after the show has ended and Ma relaxes with his friend Wong Chow San. The clicks suggest mounting tension. Gradually the background music turns to western orchestral (Sibelius) as in many "modern"dramas, but the point is made.

Ma goes home with the pittance he's made but his wife (Wong Man Lei)  bursts into tears.  She's on the verge of a breakdown. Wong's performance is frighteningly well observed, and the way she and Ma interact is sensitively played.  Ma plays with his younger son Wai Tsai, but in the process is also teaching the kid the rudiments of opera improvisation and movement.  The boy is played by Yuen Siu-fai, who also appeared in Father and Son, read more here)  The elder son, Ah Kuen has been studying abroad but comes back on vacation.  He's played by Lam Kar Sing of whom more HERE.  Ah Kuen immediately notices that something's wrong with his mother, but both parent keep up pretences.  Although Ma is broke, he loves his boys so much he wants to protect them. He takes them out for a meal and buys the younger one a toy monkey.  Little Wai Tse wants to be like Dad and sing opera : another chance for play disguised as teaching.

Proud of his Dad, Ah Kuen invites his friends to the theatre.   Once Ma was a star, now he's reduced to humiliating bit parts. Watch the way he does acrobatic back flips, though!  Though Ma is dressed as a lion clown, his expression is heartbreaking. Ah Kuen realizes that his parents are broke. He can't bear to take the money his father gives him for school.  Ma bursts into tears : for his son, he'd sacrifice anything.  "I don't want you to end up like me, you need an education to set you up for life".  Unlike many stage stars and opera singers, Ma was a natural in close-ups, acting with great nuance and subtlety.

Ah Kuen can't get a job because he has no experience, so sneaks back to school but leaves the money with his mother. With the money, Ma redeems the opera costumes he'd pawned and starts busking on the streets.  A big come down from the past, but better than starving. Yet again, this is an opportunity for Ma to demonstrate the art of Cantonese opera. A long sequence of skits in which he plays roles which are both theatre and "reality", for example a sad clown cheered by the thought of having children.  Meanwhile Mother becomes ill.  Another well acted scene in which Ma and Wong face her death with mutual respect and tenderness.  After she dies, there's a long shot of Ma in the now empty house, looking at photographs of the family in happier  times.  Back on the streets busking,there's a wonderful vignette in which Ma plays a beggar who sees a gold ingot, which is grabbed by a succession of other players "No mercy in this world" sings Ma.  eventually Ma becomes unwell and loses his voice, permanently.  "If I can't sing,how can I live!" he cries.

The busking troupe mates pool their own meagre earnings to help, but it's not enough. Wai Tsai misbehaves and Ma beats him with a feather duster.  "But I'm angry at myself", the father cries, "I didn't want to hurt you". Ma's ex boss, who was once his apprentice offers to train Wai Tsai for the opera. "I'd rather starve than seperate from you" the child cries,but the father knows  there's  no  choice. He walks away "Doesn't Dad love me ?" the child asks . A kind friend says "One day, when you're a parent,you'll understand".

Wai Tsai has talent but he's preoccupied, worrying about his Dad. The boss offers to send him home, but the boy says Dad would be disappointed.  When the boy makes his debut on stage, it's a disaster. Everyone laughs. In the shadows, the father watches, feeling the child's humiliation. as if it were his own.  Once home, he looks at the portrait of his wife and says "I've failed him like I've failed myself - are you mad at me, dear wife?" A single shot lingers on the photo. Perhaps she understands.  Ah Kuen returns. He's graduated !  But Ma is on his death bed   Seeing his son happy has made his struggles worthwhile. "I'm not going to die!" he grins. "I've been through so much. But I could use a rest", his says as he expires. The camera then pans away from the decrepit room to a vista over the houses, facing the horizon.  

Secret History : The Ghana Freedom Song

Ghana Freedom is a cult song, known to most Ghanaians under the age of 60 through the recording by E T Mensah made for Ghana's independence in 1957. The tune is irrepressible, but the story behind it is even more irrepressible than most  realize. This is a scoop for African history!  In 1977, one of the regular readers of this blog unearthed papers in Colonial Office Archive to explain the mystery.

He found a clipping from The Morning Telegraph, a Sekondi newspaper, dated 5 February 1952, which states "As an expression of solidarity between Africans of the Gold Coast and people of African descent in the West Indies, Trinidad calypso singers, headed by George Browne have composed a calypso called Freedom for Africa. The new dance song is dedicated to the Honourable Dr Kwame Nkrumah, Prime Minister and Chairman of the Convention People's Party, popularly known as the CPP" ..... "the background music is provided by African drums  played by two Gold Coast Natives, Alfred Payne of Accra and Kofi Mensah of Cape Coast. The calypso has an attractive tune and should be popular among dancers as well as among supporters of the CPP". Here are four of the eight verses::


From his Ussherfort Cell, where they bolted the doors so well,
Nkrumah made his clarion call, and the people voted him one and all.

Chorus : Freedom, freedom is in the land, Friends, let us shout, Long live the CPP! Which now controls Africa's destiny. 

They called us all the verandah boys, they thought we were just a bunch of toys, But we won the right to vote at midnight hour, came out of jail and took power.

With Appiah  the ambassador, Casely Hayford the barrister, 
these two gentlemen did quite well, they got us out of the jailhouse cell.

The British MP Gammans was rude, by his dog in the mangerish attitude, 
But like the ostrich we know that man can go bury his head in the sand

Apparently several thousand records of the song were to be made and shipped to Africa, but the Colonial Office probably wasn't pleased. In those days, The Crown Agents held a monopoly of all government business and locals weren't supposed to act independently. So if a colony grew cotton, it had to buy cotton textiles from Manchester, via the CA.  In a minute preserved in CO554/595 dated 5th January 1952, officials are discussing the activities of men like "Mr Appiah of WASU" (Joe Appiah of the West African Students Union).  Making mass copies of a recording which criticized the government would not go down well. No-one really knows what happened to the first pressing of Ghana Freedom, but quiet words may have been said in London, where the master tapes were. Colonialism was sinister and pernicious, even though there were many good idealists, like Selwyn Selwyn-Clarke and Stafford Cripps whose daughter Peggy married Appiah. Their son Kwame Anthony Appiah was professor of philosophy at Princeton and now has a chair at New York University.

The recording is "lost" as far as can be ascertained. Maybe someone has a copy somewhere? George Browne, aka Young Tiger, was also quite a character- here's his obit.

Fortunately, E T Mensah took up the cause. His song Ghana Freedom is the unofficial national anthem, even sixty years later. So the words "Toil of the brave and the sweat of their labours, they have brought results"remind us that independence wasn't an act of kindness on the part of the British.  Africans, Indians, Pakistanis and Malays died in order that the idea of freedom would be recognized. Democracy is a responsibility we must honour. Don't take it for granted ! It is not a game.

ET was a qualified pharmacist who worked for the government by day and had a huge career in hilife music at night. As he rose higher, he played less until his retirement, when he went back to hi life. In the months before his death, he was interviewed on TV about the events of 1957. He was then old and sick, but still he remembered the words to the song. 

We are "all" Ghana when we celebrate freedom. Nkrumah's government collapsed: Chaos often follows independence, especially where democracy has been so long suppressed that people don't  know how to deal with it. But the principle stands : all people have the right to self determination. These days we're facing a retreat from the very concept of democracy, when electors place their faith in demagogues. Extremism is not democracy. Real democracy comes when people take their rights seriously enough to think, evaluate and question. So democracy isn't "orderly" ? Consider the alternative.

JFK and Igor Stravinsky

On this day in 1963, JFK was assassinated. How happy he seems here. A few moments later, Jackie would be crawling over the back seat of the limo, grabbing at fragments of his brain.  No one forgets where they were when they heard the news. I was at a school fun fair and suddenly everything went quiet, and people started going home. We thought Khruschev might  throw a nuke.  This time round, the Russians pull the strings and buy politicians to do their dirty work for them.  Some of the people JFK fought against, like the KKK, are back in again, too.

"Think not what your country can do for  you, but what you can do for your country".  Now, for some people, that very concept is meaningless. Now the object of power seems to be short-sighted selfishness and divisiveness. Clearing the swamp or legitimizing a cesspit?  JFK had his faults, but at least he cared about things other than himself.  His dreams were based on social conscience and communal responsibility.  How innocent those days seem now!  Will the spark JFK lit be now extinguished. In 1963, we were scared the world would end.  Fifty-three years later. we're closer to Armageddon than ever before. Below, Igor Stravinsky's response, to a text by W H Auden, conducted by Pierre Boulez, with Cathy Berberian.

Chillingly prophetic - A Face in the Crowd

"Bible-reading, pork chop eating, just plain folks".  When The People, whoever they may be, place their faith in "demagogues in denim", they aren't taking control but handing it over.  Populism is the Triumph of Id over reason.  If the Fuhrer cheats on tax, wouldn't "we" do too?  If he attacks women, he's just reinforcing what "we" take as normal. Under the cover of The People's Will, any evil becomes aspiration.  Bullying may be successful, bit it's wrong.  Mass movements are not democracy.  Real change only comes when the fundamentals of society change. Misogyny is a symptom.  How can any system change if it's based on fundamental ideas of inequality and lack of respect for others? When people internalize self hate and think it's OK, it's like turkeys voting for Christmas.

Sixty years ago, Elia Kazan predicted the Triumph of Trump in his film A Face in the Crowd.(1957).  Lonesome Rhodes - note the impersonal name - plays "Mama Guitar" which he loves more than any woman because it's subservient and can be controlled.  People love his songs because they seem earthy. "Plain folks" identify with his homilies of home and hatred.  Lonesome becomes a star on the country music circuit.  When he sneers at advertisers, his public love it because they think he's a symbol of freedom. But he's a natural born manipulator, whose only interest is in himself.  He knows how to sell, even if what he sells is illusion: Vitajex pills that do nothing but make buyers feel they're empowered and virile.  As he rises upwards, his speil gets bigger. Eventually he gets into politics.  "Daniel Boone didn't get no welfare", so poor folks don't need support..... Far from being empowered, Lonesome's fans will empower those who exploit them. The movie is frighteningly prescient: phrases in the script pop up in populist movements everywhere. Kazan, a leftwing intellectual, might have been just the kind of uppity outsider "plain folks" don't like, but he understood that mass populism is by no means just small-town America.  Lonesome is Hitler, Stalin or Mao, disguised as Good Ol' Country Boy. Intellectuals don't come out clean, either, because they, too. are seduced.  Watch this movie, and listen to every word.

A Face in the Crowd is brilliant, but falls flat in its happy ending. Lonesome is exposed when his cynicism is revealed live on air, and his fans get mad. and his game collapses.  In real life, as we've seen, people seem to take pride in being selectively gullible. No matter how blatantly they're abused, they take it without demur. Turkeys for Christmas. No matter how evil the Fuhrer, it's OK as long as he is One of Us. Political pundits will analyze Brexit, Trump and other movements, but I suspect the roots lie in wilful ignorance, in a kind of mass collusion. Lonesome has a machine which plays applause when there's no audience.  Lonesome's platform is mass media, which reflects whatever is fed into it, not necessarily the truth, whatever that might be.  A metaphor for those who live in cyberspace where reason doesn't intrude.  Unless change comes from genuine respect for other people, it remains an empty slogan.

Boris Blacher, Manchuria and Flüchtlinge

Boris Blacher (1903-75), the highly influential composer, and father of Kolja Blacher the violinist, was born in Newchwang, now part of the city of Yingkou on the Gulf of Bohai, in Liaoning Province in China. He lived there until he was sixteen, remaining in Manchuria for three more years before going to Germany in 1922.  The photo at left is Blacher's passport photo taken when he left China.  Being a modernist, "degenerate" in  Nazi eyes, he couldn't teach, but continued to write. His opera Romeo und Julia dates from 1943.  After the war his career flourished. He knew Berthold Goldschmidt, his almost exact contemporary, and taught Aribert Reimann, Isang Yun, Kalevi Aho and many others. Blacher was one of the millions of Germans who lived outside Germany, some communities being established for hundreds of years throughout Eastern Europe. After 1918, and more severely after 1945, when borders were re-drawn, these communities were effectively stateless. Many were ethnic cleansed, millions became refugees. Not all that different from the upheavals that happened in the century of war that ripped China apart after the Opium Wars, when China was invaded by western military force, and Unequal Treaties were imposed which granted foreign powers exemption from Chinese law and granted exclusive rights over trade, a situation which ultimately led to the collapse of the Qing Dynasty, the Japanese occupation, civil war and communism.  Hundreds of millions were dislocated over a long period. In the 1931-45 war alone tens of millions trekked from the coast to the Himalayas.  A century of chaos all over the world. 

Newchwang was a Treaty Port created in 1858. In Blacher's time, Newchwang was a godforsaken little town on a river that froze up all winter. Sometimes the sea froze too. In summer, it's extremely hot, not at all an easy climate.  Bear this in mind when considering the film Flüchtlinge  (Refugees) made in 1933, based on a novel by Gerhard Menzel (1894-1965). Menzel was a Nazi so the nationalism in the film is tainted, even though the film itself isn't much more jingoistic than a lot that was happening at this early stage in the Reich.  The star, Hans Albers, the biggest star of his time, was not a party follower and in any case had a Jewish partner, who had to flee to Switzerland, though they reunited after the war.  The director was  Gustav Ucicky (1899-1961) the half-Czech illegitimate son of Gustav Klimt.

In any case. the situation the movie depicts was so extreme that it would have merited similarly nationalistic sentiment had it happened elsewhere.  The photo at right shows Newchwang a year after Blacher's birth.  Click to enlarge - it's very detailed. "Abandoned Newchwang", conquered by crack Russian troops, fighting Manchu bannerman. No contest.  The Russians had already seized northern Manchuria,  and had built a railway line through the province, to extract its mineral wealth.  Soon after, Russia and Japan went to war, and the devastation spread, culminating in huge naval battles and the siege of Port Arthur, itself the site of a massacre ten years before when the Japanese wiped out the Chinese population. Thus, the background to the Japanese invasion of China 25 years later and the War in the Pacific.  Matters were compounded with the Bolshevik revolution in 1917, when millions of "White" (ie not Red) Russians fled across Siberia to Manchuria, from part of which the Japanese had evicted the Russians.

The film Flüchtlinge  begins in August 1928. Everyone's fleeing the return of the Russians - Chinese, Russians, Jews and Volga Deutsch, the German population on the Volga that the Reds wanted rid of. Some of the cast are East Asian of some sort : one of them speaks proper Mandarin and rattles off his German text as if he's memorized it off paper.  Yingkou (Newchwang) is mentioned specifically, but most are trying to get to Harbin, further north, where the Russian-built railway can take them away.  That was the city from which young Blacher left for Germany six years before, when this branch of the railway was run by Whites, Japanese and Chinese.

The refugees are caught in machine-gun fire, and some of the men are dragged away screaming by Bolshevik soldiers. They're also dying of thirst, so break the pipes on the trains to get the water that runs the steam engines. Without water, though, the trains won't run.  Hans Albers plays Arneth, who at first appears as a sadistic Englishman, but turns out to be a German, who felt betrayed by the 1918 revolution in Germany and by what happened after.  As many did. Whence Hitler.  Will Arneth betray the refugees or help them ? He chooses the latter.  Eventually the train gets going, though the tracks are twisted and a grain silo gets holed by grenades.  It would be easy to dismiss Flüchtlinge as propaganda, but such events did take place and to real people all over the world in some form or other.  Please also see my piece Art Song that became an Icon : On the Songhua River, which some might sneer at because it's communist, while  Flüchtlinge is early Nazi.  Incidentally, they're  both about the same part of Manchuria.  What matters isn't nationality but human beings, whether they are on "our side" or not. Did Blacher see these movies ? Chances are he would have known about Flüchtlinge through the China-returned German community. On the Songhua River was heavily promoted in East Berlin. and the DDR. Chances are he did. Did he realize he was seeing them through different perspectives ? 

Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg - Bayerische Staatsoper Munich

Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg from the Bayerische Staatsoper, Munich:  so dark and disturbing that it makes uncomfortable viewing. But truly great works of art operate on many levels, the greater the piece the greater the possibilities.  It is a measure of Wagner's greatness that the ideas he dealt with nearly 150 years ago apply, almost frighteningly,  to the present.  This Meistersinger provokes more questions than it gives answers, exactly what we need at the present when assumptions about art, politics and society are in unprecedented flux.

Who are the Meistersingers? Wagner makes a point of describing them as distinct individuals, with different backgrounds, united more or less by their love for art.  All of them have other day jobs: art is something they choose to place their faith in.  Although Hans Sachs and Sixtus Beckmesser dominate, it is wise to consider the Meistersingers as a group of personalities resolving the inevitable conflicts of diversity through compromise.  Rules help them muddle through by providing a kind of framework in which to regulate their art. But the rules are, in fact, made up ad hoc.  Beckmesser is so obessesed with finding fault that he runs out of space on his marking slate.  He works himself into crazed frenzy. Reality is never quite so extreme.  Yet the Meistersingers, supposedly wise representatives of common sense, get caught up in Beckmesser's hysteria and hate.  How easily civilized society can disintegrate when demagogues take control! Were it not for Hans Sachs and the voice of reason, Walter von Stoltzing, and what he stands for, would have been driven out of Nuremberg forthwith. How easily society descends into mindless, repression and group think.  What kind of society cannot cope with change and must suppress new ideas?

The Meistersingers here are depicted as ordinary men, to whose credit have worked hard to make something of their craft. Ordinary men, who've meant well. They think they're in control, but are easily manipulated into forgetting the very fundamentals of art, that art should enhance life, and must, like Nature itself, constantly refresh. Hence the urban landscape.  Walter learned his art from the birds in the woodland, who are free. Birds don't survive in these grim conditions.  As Wagner clearly stated in his stage directions, angles in the Church are distorted. Something's askew. Eva (Emma Bell) participates in formulaic rituals but recognizes Walter (Robert Künzli) as a fellow free spirit right from the start.  The apprentices, being young, are also still untamed, but how is their energy directed.  Just as each of the Meistersingers is defined as a distinctive personality, this David (Benjamin Bruns) isn't a stereotype but a well-characterized combination of worthiness and weakness, not a youth but not yet an artist until the end.

In the First Act, the staging sets the personalities. In the Second, the staging focuses on the community. Sachs (Wolfgang Koch) operates out of a van marked "Schuhe".  It reminds us that Sachs is out in the open, in the night air. Is he a Wanderer, who sees all yet can't easily intervene?  There's no tree in this square, but a cherry picker crane that can be cranked up and down if needed, a stage idea that's more effective than it looks. Beckmesser can reach great heights, but by artificial means, reflecting the idea of an elder tree and its connotations of delusion.

The citizens of this Nuremberg live in anonymous housing blocks, as we'd see in any desolate city where conditions are hard, and expectations are limited.  These are the universal disenfranchised, the kind of people whose horizons are curtailed, and who make easy prey for populist demagogues that make them feel they are "taking control" when they are, in reality, being manipulated.   Given the events of 2016, and the rise of Pegida and other right-wing extremists, it would be easy to make connections with 1933, but David Bösch, the director, deliberately avoids easy answers. He makes us feel sympathy for these dislocated souls, despite the violence with which they express themselves. To counteract such evil we need to understand and analyze, though not condone. Thus Beckmesser gets beaten up, and savagely. Nothing scenic about this brutality. The Nightwatchman (Goran Jurić) is an ordinary German policeman, a symbol of order, but one who cannot reverse the insanity once it's been released. The mob bully him back into his squad car. They wield poles, like knights n the past would have wielded spears : the romance of the past revealed as petty crime.

Similarly, this Beckmesser (Martin Gantner) isn't a caricature, but is interpreted as a weak but opportunistic personality who assumes that playing the right games gets you ahead.  He's very nearly right. Were it not for Sachs, his gold lamé suit and string vest might make him a superstar in some eyes, though his instrument is minute.  Walter, in leathers, looks like a thug but is the true artist, rough edges and all.  David could go either way, meaning well but prone to fudging corners.   Wolfgang Koch's Sachs impressed: although he's grimy (as the real Sachs probably was), intelligence shines out of his eyes. His movements are sharp and he takes in all that's happening around him, as a good Sachs should.  Koch is so experienced that authoritative singing comes naturally to him: no need for exaggerated folksiness.  His "Wahn! Wahn! Überall Wahn!" sounded genuinely perplexed, as if he were trying to make sense of what's going wrong, rather than just sighing in despair.  As he sang, his voice warmed with resolve.  Sachs can, and will, stand up for reason.

No open meadows in the final scene. Perhaps the Pegnitz no longer flows, or has been diverted underground.  We still see flags but these are flags of a more sinister kind. We're indoors, in a closed auditorium, cut off from the real world. On a hot Johannisnacht, the atmosphere would be stifling. And so, perhaps, a commentary on the nature of guilds and competition, of the channeling of diversity into an apparently cohesive celebration. "Brought to you by Pogner", a sign declares, for Pogner (Georg Zeppenfeld) was the agent who created the situation through which Eva was auctioned off to the highest bidder, bringing out the worst in Beckmesser, who might not otherwise have dared  to move. Pogner's white suit isn't as pure as it might seem.  The mob in the square covered the city walls in graffiti. Here, the "promoters" cover the meadow with commercial slogans.  Either way, defacement, and the defacement of culture as sacred mission.

The guilds come together in a show of  unity, but how much of this unity is real, and how much controlled by convention. Each guild flaunts its superiority. Listen to the music: "Streck'! Streck'! Streck'!" and "Beck! Beck! Beck!", violence channelled into ostensibly cheerful chorus. The Tailors hold up the tools of their trade: giant scissors which could cut a man in two, stained with blood.  In some shots the blades of the scissors appear above the tailor's heads as if they were the horns of the devil.  The Prize scene is a Prize Fight, but the wider scene suggests a kind of Party Rally, with the crowds cheering as if on cue. Alas, Nuremberg has yet to live down 1936, even though not all the good folk of the city were participants. But at least the memory serves to remind us how dangerous Party Rallies can be, when people can be manipulated into unthinking frenzy and violence. Even decent, ordinary people who let themselves be fooled by soundbites.  No wonder Walter doesn't want more of the same.  Beckmesser gets beaten yet again, and brutally, this time shooting himself.   Fortunately, though, Walter does win, and wins Eva, the two of them offering hope by renewal.  What Walter will learn from Sachs will determine the direction of Holy German Art.

How much have audiences learned from Wagner, and from Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, though, I wonder ?  In the dark clouds gathering around us in 2016, have we learned  anything from history?  Can art save civilization? Or is human nature so venal that the ideals of enlightenment must be destroyed in a wave of ever-narrowing bigotry and the resurgence of fascist values?  In this production, the bust of Wagner comes in a box marked "fragile".  Fortunately in Munich, the cheers were louder than the boos, a cause for hope.  Kirill Petrenko conducted a very good cast even without a megastar like Jonas Kaufmann.  For that, I was glad, for Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg is about ordinary people doing extraordinary things.   This production, directed by David Bösch, is finely detailed and will probably reveal its depths as time goes on. It's different, but its insights come from the opera itself.  It's not easy. But the issues it confronts are not easy and need to be confronted with courage and with Hans Sachs's fair minded common sense.  

Shangri-la Finborough Theatre - more than just a play

“You like your minorities like your pandas – picturesque, cuddly, endangered, helpless. But I refuse to be a panda. I refuse to go extinct. I want to live, to live well, to live like them.”

More than just a new play,  Shangri-la is a play that connects to issues rarely discussed but that need to be addressed.  It runs at the Finbourough Theatre from 12th July to 5th August.

"Bunny, a young indigenous woman, has witnessed her family’s livelihood destroyed by mass tourism. She dreams of escape — as a globe-trotting photographer. Nelson, her liberal Chinese boss, dreams of a new kind of tourism that's sustainable and enables genuine cultural exchange. Their white Western clients yearn for escape, for the touch of something authentic.........What happens when the only thing you have to sell is your culture? When the only way to free yourself is to betray your roots?"

Does tourism destroy the very culture it seeks to promote ?  Shangri-la is written by Amy Ng who has personal experience of the westernmost regions of China and Tibet. A historian by training (Yale and Oxford), she understands the wider issues  that impact on societies "opened" to western tourism  READ MORE HERE and especially read about the discussion forums that are taking place with the play.

Prophetic London Belongs to Me

A petty criminal, peruses the comics. "Easy Pickings", he thinks. But "easy pickings" and easy answers don't mean taking control.   London Belongs to Me now seems terrifyingly prophetic. The film begins in the London of 1938 : social change is already underway.   Once grand terraces are now multiple occupancy rooming houses, with lodgers who can't meet their rents, or feed their gas meters.  The landlady, Mrs Vizzard, lives in grand delusion, still dressed in Edwardian garb, her home cluttered as if in Victorian time warp.  A new lodger (Mr Squales) turns up. He's so unnatural that she thinks he's an actor. He is, but not quite in the way she thinks.  Mrs Vizzard  hosts seances for dodgy mediums who claim to commune with the dead and foretell the future. Think on that.

It's Christmas, and Mr and Mrs Josser, daughter Doris and Uncle Henry are having Christmas dinner.  Fellow tenant Connie fakes a faint to con a free feed.  The family discuss the Munich Agreement.  As he cracks a walnut, Uncle Henry says "If we don't wake up, Hitler will have us like this!"  "For goodness sake", says Mrs Josser, "Put on your paper hat and enter into the spirit".  Percy the flashy young spiv takes Doris to a dodgy night club, which gets raided. Percy escapes but Doris gets caught. But the policeman, Sgt  Bill Wilson, who takes her details, doesn't note them in the right place, because he fancies her.   Hoping to make enough money to start a business, Percy steals a car.  Spotting the police, he panics. The  ex-girlfriend who forced him to take her for a ride is killed, though it's not exactly clear how and by whom.  Even Mr Squales worries that he might have been involved, without "being himself".  . 

Mrs Vizzard learns that Mr Squales has been faking photographs of ghosts at seances, and kicks him out.  "I've no use for frauds and common adventurers".  Squales overhears Sgt Wilson order Percy's arrest and uses this to have a  trance "revelation" . When Percy is picked up, Mrs Vizzard is fooled all over again.  In prison, Percy has graphic nightmares. "I never did it!" he cries.   Mr Josser uses the money he's saved for a cottage in the country to hire a defence lawyer for Percy, even though he doesn't like the lad, because it's the moral thing to do.  Mr Squales turns up for the prosecution. It seems the girlfriend was killed by a "blow to the head" though she was hit by a passing car after falling out of  Percy's car.  Percy is condemned.  Won over by Mr Josser's generosity, Uncle Henry organizes a mission to save Percy, and raises a petition that gets so many names that it has to be carried to the Home Office pushed in a pram. Wonderful shots of the procession of protestors crossing Westminster Bridge in pouring rain !  Big Ben booms. It's 5 pm. Are they too late ? But the newspapers announce that Percy's been reprieved.  It's August the 31st, 1939...; what happens next ?  Air raid sirens. Mr Squales, now married to Mrs Vizzard, says the spirits tell him the war will soon be over. Mr and Mrs Josser are staying in London, despite the war.  They wouldn't leave Doris.  The film ends with a shot of Dulcimer Street. "They certainly are fine houses" says the narrator.  So are some of the people within.

London Belongs to Me was made by Sidney Gilliat in 1948. It stars Richard Attenborough, then aged 25 though he looks even younger.  It's long been one of the great classics of British cinema, but after the Brexit debacle, perhaps it means even more, now.

Dennis Hopper naked - Night Tide

Night Tide (1961) a Hollywood B movie so beautifully made, so quirky and so original it should be recognized as art. It stars Dennis Hopper , then only 24, as Johnny, a sailor who comes from land-locked Denver, Colorado. Fascinated by the sights and sounds of Venice Beach with its carnival attractions. Enticed by exotic music, he wanders into a jazz club. Pay attention to the  music. It weaves serpent-like throughout the film and is a way above average film score. Composer is David Raskin.The director was Curtis Harrington. 

Johnny sees an exotic woman, so elegant she seems to come from another  world.  She's terrified when a strange woman comes in and addresses her.  It's all Greek to  Johnny, but he follows her because she's so upset. She's called Mora, and she lives in a tower, looking out to sea, over a merry-go-round. "I'm a mermaid" she says, "Half woman and half fish". She sits in a tank of water and people pay 25 cents to look at her. "It's very relaxing". She came from the island of Mykonos, adopted by a sea captain, who is way too Oxbridge to have been a career seaman, but has washed up in Venice Beach ("nothing like the real Venice, of course")  At a night party on the beach, Mora dances to hypnotic bongo drums, faster and faster til she falls in a faint. Johnny spots the Greek woman in the distance.  A bizarre English fortune teller and a wholesome American girl warn Johnny that there's something dangerous about Mora.

A wonderfully-filmed sequence of angles and strange planes, where Johnny runs under freeway bridges and derelict buildings, following the Greek woman who disappears outside the sea captain's house. Captain Murdock tells Johnny about the Sirens, who lure men to their deaths.  Not legends. . "There are things in this world you'll never believe!"  At last, Mora acknowledges the mystery woman. "She's one of Them, she's coming to take me back" The fortune teller, like Captain Murdock, has a bizarre past,{ but is or the scriptwriter was)  transformation, vortices, danger. "Is that good or bad?" says down to earth Johnny.


Back in his rooming house, Johnny thinks he's embracing Mora but she disappears. He sees wet footprints running from the bathtub, down the stairs, and follows them to the beach. Another well filmed sequence , shot under the pier: Johnny rescuers Mora from the water.  Next we see her in bed, but where was Johnny all night? Mora tells him to go get a massage, which is a very strange thing to say if they'd spent the night together in the usual way.  The masseur is one of the jazz musicians. Captain Murdock's there, too.

This is no ordinary massage. "You all tied up in knots" says the masseur. "Girlfriend not treating you right?" Are there deeper meanings in the film? The conversation between the masseur and the sea captain is full of innuendo, so explicitly homosexual that the scene was cut from initial release. The camera has lingered lovingly on Dennis Hopper's body, in tight Navv pants and naked, so many times that it's pretty clear that there's another narrative behind the main plot. hence the jazz band and dangerous (for 1961) interracial and unmentioned other subcultures, but an overwhelming fear of women.   Unsurprisingly, the movie was released as downmarket schlock horror. Mainstream audiences wouldn't get the subtext. Needless to say, the film was produced by a small independent company, not a big studio.

Mora calls Johnny into the sea. He dives underwater and nearly drowns. Where's Moira?  He next sees her on the rocks, with a fishtail instead of legs.  In reality, or what passes for it, he reads a newspaper which has a story about Mora the Mermaid. She and the Captain have been doing their act for 20 years, but she still looks the same as she did then.

Yet another brilliantly filmed sequence as Johnny walks throughb the fairground, the carvings on the attractions lit up as if the were gargoyles come alive. Lightning flashes, waves crash. Then Johnny sees Mora, floating, apparently dead......  But how did she die, ad who killed her? Captain Murdock tells the police that he'd brought Mora up to think she was a Siren, so she couldn't have relations with men.  He says he killed her previous boyfriends, so they couldn't take her away, and committed suicide rather than have Johnny die, too. The police think Mora was the killer and that the Captain was trying to protect her. "But what about the mystery woman?" asks Johnny. " It was true. !It wasn't m imagination".  When Johnny leaves, the nice wholesome girl asks if he'll be back. "Merry-go-round", he says. Mora lived above the merry-go-round. in ever sense. As the shore patrol take Johnny back to base, it's pouring with rain outside. Not quite "Sunny California".

If you like this post, please read : George Antheil : Daughter of Horror 
and Zemlinsky Die Seejungfrau

The Song of Malaya ; a song for the displaced

Tse Lo lin (紫羅蓮) died this week aged 90.  Song of Malaya (馬來亞之戀) (1954) was one of her most famous movies, for which she also wrote the script. The film is much more than a romance in an exotic locale. It deals with issues like the traumatic dislocation of war, the identity of overseas Chinese, and the moral and cultural obligations of an individual to society.  An extremely beautiful film and very moving. Tse also founded and managed the production company. She was then only 30 years old - quite an achievement for any young actress, anywhere.

Tse was caught up in the Japanese occupation of Hong Kong, and forced to participate in the high-profile film the Japanese Army made to commemorate their victory. It is an important historical document, since it was begun within weeks of the fall of Hong Kong on December 25th 1941, when the city was still scarred by battle. Re-enactments were filmed as accurately as possible, on location, with the supervison  of officers who had taken part. Tse played a small part as a local girl, but was most certainly not a collaborator. She was smuggled out in considerable danger, rejoining other members of the Hong Kong film industry who had regrouped as exiles in Free China. China had been at war with Japan since1931. Shanghai and Canton had been conquered. The biggest mass migration in history occured when around 25 million people became refugees,trekking from the coast to the Himilayas.  The charismatic  actor Ng Chor Fan already was a figure in the anti-Japanese resistance, having been an activist since the early 1930's, making patriotic movies and organizing refugee relief. Chinese cinema always has had a social and moral conscience.

In The Song of Malaya (aka Love in Malaya), Tse plays Yuk-kin, a girl who has lost her homeland and family in the war, and travels to Kuala Lumpur, searching for her father who had emigrated years before. Since Malaya had also been occupied by the Japanese, the background of social upheaval hangs heavily on the film.  Tse arrives in Malaya,  excited by the strange new surroundings, but she's dispossesed. Luckily, she's taken in by kind local Chinese, some of whom had been in Malaya so long that they had acculturated as Malay. She meets and is attracted to Mr Wong (played by Cheung Wood Yau) who runs a school for the Wah Kiu (overseas Chinese) so they can learn Chinese and understand their identity in a multi-cultural society.  He's from China, too, and, like Tse, has lost all contact with his family and native region.  Eventually, Tse meets up with her father, (played by Ng Chor Fan) who is now a westernized businessman with a Wah Kiu wife (Mary Man Lee) who wears sarong kebaya and acculturates Malay. Imagine the tensions.

Tse goes to live in Singapore with her Dad and finish her education. Her father's associate, Mr Cheung (played by Cheung Ying), falls in love with her and wants to marry her. Below, in the clip, we can see Tse sing about Malaya, new hopes and dreams and of friendship between Wah Kiu and  China-born. Watch the dynamic between her and her audience. She waves at Schoolteacher Wong, who waves back at her. But things are not to be. Wong's wife and son come out of China, but Wong dies, and presumably they're destitute again. Tse marries Cheung, and they plan a round-the-world honeymoon. But Tse knows where her destiny lies, and Cheung is a good man. So they use their money to continue Wong's mission to provide a good education for the Wah Kiu.

Tse, the woman, not the character, was deeply religious and stopped making movies in the mid-1960's  to raise a family. Her marriage ended early in divorce, and she moved to Seattle, bringing up her daughters.  So she, and they, became Wah Kiu, like millions of other Chinese who have emigrated and live often outside their roots. Not refugees like Tse's character in the movie, but displaced people who forge new identities. I wish The Song of Malaya could be released again because in some ways it's even more relevant now. In the second clip, which mixes the intro with short clips from the film, the scene at the building site is symbolic.The cranes work well, but the peasant hauls soil in a wheelbarrow. Together they build a channel for a river.  Hence, integration and commitment, not anomie.