Michael Collins (1996)

Anyone expecting from Neil Jordan's 1996 film the definitive account of the life of Michael Collins and  the fight for a free Ireland will be sorely disappointed. Jordan was perfectly placed to deliver a modern epic, but instead his film harks back to the kind of thing John Ford did back in the 1930s and '40s. 

When I first saw this as a young man I was quite impressed by it, but I didn't know my Irish history as well as I would come to do and I think that's why, upon this rewatch, I wasn't as keen - because the problem here is historical accuracy and Jordan's decision to fictionalise much of the story. 

It's one thing to alter the circumstances of Harry Boland's death (he was not shot escaping through the sewers a'la Orson Welles in The Third Man - he was in fact shot during an aborted arrest by soldiers of the  Irish Free State Army at Skerries Grand Hotel, and died some days later in hospital) and to outright kill the double agent Ned Broy at the torturous hands of the British, when in fact Broy went on to live into old age. But it's something else to fictionalise the events of the first 'Bloody Sunday' - the massacre of fourteen innocent civilians at Croke Park football ground in 1920. In reality, the Auxiliaries and the Black and Tans entered the stadium to conduct a search for the accomplices of Collins responsible for the deaths of soldiers, policeman, informers and intelligence operatives known as the 'the Cairo Gang'.  Whilst undertaking this duty, the British began firing their rifles and revolvers in what their commanding officer Major Mills would later describe as an 'excited and out of hand' manner. In Jordan's film however, we see armoured vehicles roll onto the pitch itself before firing indiscriminately and without warning upon the crowds assembled there. 

The DVD I watched is a 20th anniversary edition that comes with a commentary from Jordan himself and I could not resist rewatching this controversial scene to hear his account first hand. It's telling that he first says that he felt he had to 'falsify history', before realising the negative connotations of just such a phrase and correcting himself with 'dramatise history' instead. Unfortunately, I feel he was right the first time. The events of Bloody Sunday in 1920 and the consequences of British imperialism in Ireland (and indeed , the world over) were truly horrific and shameful - it did not need exaggeration for dramatic effect. Given that tentative ceasefires were occurring between Ireland and the British at the time of the film's production and release, it's easy to see why Jordan's choices came in for much criticism as being rather inflammatory. 

Jordan subsequently lands himself in further hot water when depicting the events of Collins' assassination in 1922. His film strongly implies that Éamon de Valera had a hand in the ambush at Béal na Bláth by forging a link between the political leader and a fictional assassin played by a young Jonathan Rhys Meyers (in reality the man who fired the fatal bullet was a former British army sniper and his motivations and the circumstances surrounding Collins' death remain unclear). Jordan claims that it was never his intention to imply that de Valera had anything to do with Collins' murder, but his claims do not hold water because of this or his previous decision to depict de Valera as knowingly sacrificing Collins in Westminster to deliver a free state proposal that led to the Irish Civil War. His decision to close the film on de Valera's comment that "History will record the greatness of Michael Collins, and it will be at my expense" makes it sound less like political ruefulness and more like an admission of guilt too. 

Away from the issues with accuracy, the film boasts many strengths. The cast is uniformly strong, led by Liam Neeson in a role he was born to play (albeit a few years earlier - Neeson at 44 is too long in the tooth to convince as a republican leader who was just 31 when he died). Admittedly there are some hokey accents on display here; American Aidan Quinn stars as Boland and Alan Rickman is a great de Valera, but you're perpetually aware that he's doing an accent and you're willing him to nail every inflection the minute he opens his mouth, which rather detracts somewhat. Nevertheless, he is significantly better than Julia Roberts as Collins' sweetheart Kitty Kiernan, a role that earned her many brickbats at the time. To be fair to Roberts (she continued to struggle with the Irish accent in the much lambasted Mary Reilly)  she's not solely culpable here because Jordan has written a very poor part; each time she arrives in a scene, heralded by Elliot Goldenthal 'Romantic' score (that's with a capital R - so soft you'd have to thumb it in), your heart sinks because you know you're in store for some boring moments before we can get back to the fighting, of the political or very real variety. It's fair to say she's miscast yes, but you have to admire her desire to want to be taken more seriously internationally at this stage in her career. It doesn't help either that she has very little chemistry with Neeson, or indeed Quinn as a rival for her affections. Rounding out the cast are Ian Hart, Stephen Rea and a succession of familiar Irish faces, including a pre-fame Brendan Gleeson (looking very much like his son, Brian). There's also a small but pivotal and classy cameo from Charles Dance.

The film looks beautiful too and it's easy to see why it was one of the most expensive films produced in Ireland, going on to reap the benefits by taking £4million on its release and making it the highest grossing film ever released in Ireland at that time (Titanic would later relegate it to second place). Goldenthal's score is strong too, and the decision to incorporate Sinéad O'Connor at one key point was inspired.

Wordless Wednesday: The Real Peaky Blinders

Silent Sunday: Remembrance

Raw Material by Alan Sillitoe

As a young man, Alan Sillitoe was one of the first authors to capture my imagination. I was in my teens when I read Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, discovering a story printed on the page that actually felt like the life I saw and experienced on a daily basis. The drinking culture, the hard and depressed industrial towns, the philosophy of the protagonist, all chimed with me.

A couple of years ago whilst on holiday in Settle I picked up a couple of vintage paperback novels of Sillitoe and have just finished reading one in two gloriously sunny days flat this week. Though to cal it a novel is perhaps inaccurate. Raw Material from 1974 is part novel, part autobiography and part family history.

In detailing the lives of his ancestors, Sillitoe discusses at length the barbaric horrors of the Great War in a manner which would not endear him to Michael Gove. It's a fascinating read which enlightened me to a particularly bloody and shameful moment during that whole futile conflict - the incident at Meteren, 14th April 1918 - a chapter of our history that has been somewhat hushed up.

"I have scoured official histories, and searched divisional accounts, but can find no mention of it save for one book; Machine Guns: Their History and Tactical Employment by Lt. Col. G.S. Hutchinson, published in 1938" Sillitoe states.

On the 9th April, the German forces moved their artillery train of heavy guns from the Somme to commence the offensive on the Lys. The artillery disintegrated the Portuguese corps and routed the English who swiftly became demoralised and in fear for their lives, or 'panicked' as the official line has it. Resistance quickly collapsed in the face of the offensive as the officers and their young and inexperienced soldiers who had been holding the line at that point fled and deserted. Hutchison, the author of the book Sillitoe refers to, was the commander of the 33rd Division's Machine Gun Battalion and was ordered to the village of Meteren, near Bailleul, to defend a tactically important hill against the enemy. 

"He relates how, on his reconnaisance on 12th April" Sillitoe explains in discussing Hutchinson's account, "he went into a roadside estaminet and found a crowd of British stragglers, fighting drunk. He ordered a machine gun to be trained upon them, and sent them forward towards the Germans where, he said 'they perished to a man'"

"By 14th April the Germans were attacking once more, and again men were inclined to flee. Hutchinson therefore ordered the sergeants in charge of the gun teams to fire on any British troops who began to retreat. He then goes on to say 'From near the mill I saw one of my gunners destroy a platoon of one regiment which in its panic had taken to flight'"

"For this confession of atrocity," Sillitoe recounts, "no one was ever brought to trial. The line at this point had only recently been reinforced by very young and half trained soldiers, boys who were dragged unwilling from farm and factory, slum and office. For not playing the game, and obeying the stringent rules laid down for them, the Gestapo machine gunning officers and sergeants murdered them"

"As far as I can ascertain from official history the units from which the forty murdered men of this platoon could have come were the 1st Scottish Rifles, the 1st Queen's Regiment, The XXI Corps Reinforcement Battalion, or from three platoons of the 8th Middlesex (Pioneers)....If anyone lost a member of his family this day and from one of those regiments it is possible that they were not shot by Germans, but that they were butchered when faced with an overdose of British rancour" Sillitoe concludes, adding quite understandably "How many more were there?" 

With such horrors in mind, is it any surprise that the Etaples Mutiny had occurred just seven months earlier in September, 1917 - a mutiny that was eventually quashed by two battalions from the Front? 

Is it any surprise - given how hushed up Meteren seems to be - that the documents surrounding Etaples (which should have come to light last year after the hundred years had passed for the files to enter into the public domain) were 'accidentally' lost to a blaze in the late 1970s - around the same time that William Allison and John Fairley's book on Percy Toplis, The Monocled Mutineer, was published.  As for Lt.Col G.S. Hutchinson, a man so utterly unrepentant in his role in such mass slaughter of his fellow countrymen that he happily presented us with the facts in his own book, Sillitoe discovered that he was awarded the Military Cross and te Distinguished Service Order, as well as being mentioned four times in despatches. After the First World War, he became involved in political work in Poland which Sillitoe attests that "it was here that he seems to have become infected with the virulent anti-semitism which lasted until his death" He was the author of some sixteen books on military and political matters, one of which was effusive with praise for Nazi Germany. Using the pseudonym of 'Graham Seton', he wrote several penny dreadful adventure novels, which often cast Jews and foreigners as the villains. In 1933 he set up the National Workers Movement; an organisation that was heavily influenced by similar bodies he had seen first hand in Nazi Germany. He sat on the National Playing Fields Association's Executivr Council and on the board of Gordon Boys School. He spent the Second World War working for the air ministry and died in 1946.

Churchill Overkill

With Gary Oldman tipped for the Oscar this year for his performance in Darkest Hour, many have proclaimed him to be the definitive Churchill. But, well I don't know about you, but don't you think we've had enough biopics about Winston Churchill now?

We've had Albert Finney in 2002's The Gathering Storm, and Brendan Gleeson in 2009's Into The Storm. We've had Michael Gambon in 2016's Churchill's Secret and Brian Cox in last year's Churchill. We've had Timothy Spall appear as Churchill in The King's Speech from 2010 and John Lithgow as Churchill in Netflix's acclaimed drama series The Crown. We've even had both Andy Nyman and Richard McCabe play him in Peaky Blinders. And all of these are just those of note made in the last 15 years or so, there's plenty more, and (perhaps asides from Peaky Blinders which shows him to be a ruthless horse trader) all of them say the same thing: that Churchill was The Greatest Briton Who Ever Lived™.

Now far be it from me to say that Churchill wasn't a remarkable man who helped obliterate Hitler's dream of a thousand year Reich, but I've always believed that this canonisation of Churchill to be deeply worrying. To my mind, Churchill was simply the right man for the job at the time. In short; he was a wartime prime minister, terrible in peace time. None of these biopics ever explore any other aspect of Churchill's life, character or political career and it's immensely frustrating because they're choosing to ignore a lot of things that need addressing about the man.

Churchill was not a saint and many would struggle to view him heroically. This is a man who said "I hate Indians. They are beastly people with a beastly religion". In 1943 4 millions Bengalis died from a famine he later claimed was their own fault because they "bred like rabbits". 

A year later in 1944 he ordered the British army to open fire on protesters on the streets of Athens, killing 28 civilians and injuring 120. These Greeks were partisans who fought with the British against the Nazis and the reason Churchill turned on them was because he feared their communist tendencies. He supported the right wing Greek government and wanted to see the monarchy restored. He employed former RUC commander Charles Wickham to train Greece's security forces. His actions helped shape the far right movement that continues in Greece to this day. 

His actions in India and Greece were not uncharacteristic either, there's several countries blighted by Churchill's less than saintly character: Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine, Kenya, and South Africa, the latter with its disgusting British run concentration camps and which Churchill argued that black people should be exempted from voting. He was a keen proponent of chemical warfare against Kurds and Afghans, believed in the superiority of white people, and also advocated sterilisation and labour camps for 'degenerate Britons'. Perhaps he considered the striking miners of Tonypandy as degenerates when he sent the troops in to the area  to maintain order in 1910? A decision he made again in Liverpool just a year later - this time the soldiers opened fire, killing two people. Also that year Churchill dabbled in the Sidney Street siege between some 200 police and Latvian anarchists, ordering the police to let the house the gang were hiding in burn down.

You can read more about this less than glorious side to Winston Churchill both here and here.

All I'm saying is if these countless biopics don't address all sides of the man then aren't we just whitewashing his legend? And isn't it time we started bringing the lives of other notable politicians to the screen - where, for example, are the biopics of Clem Attlee or Nye Bevan?

Wittgenstein (1993)

"So what are you planning to do with the rest of your life?"

"I shall start by committing suicide"

Much more playful than I imagined, Derek Jarman's penultimate film attempts to tell the life of the Viennese-born, Cambridge educated academic Ludwig Wittgenstein, a man believed to be one of the greatest philosophers of all time, yet whose on relationship with philosophy was strained because of his dislike of the subject and his belief that it was simply a by-product of misunderstandings, the root cause of which lies in the faults of our language to effectively communicate what we feel. 

At least I think anyway. What I know about Wittgenstein I could frankly write on the back of a fag packet. What I do know is that Jarman's film is remarkably inventive. Shot in the modern theatrical style (a lack of budget meant black drapes dress the empty sound stage Jarman assembles his cast upon) the film depicts the life of its subject through a series of vignettes, told in the context of Wittgenstein's homosexuality. 

Karl Johnson delivers a career highlight performance in the lead role. Looking remarkably like the man himself, he plays the full gamut of emotions from intuitive thinker to difficult genius - a man whose life is tainted by his privileged upbringing and his academic abilities, when all he seemingly ever wanted was the humble, simple life of a working man. He's well supported by fellow Jarman regulars Michael Gough as Bertrand Russell (perfect casting!) and Tilda Swinton Lady Ottoline Morrell. There's also the peculiar inclusion of a little green martian into Wittgenstein's life story, and this character - arguing the existence of a post box with Wittgenstein's younger self (Clancy Chassay) - is played by Nabil Shaban, effectively recreating his Doctor Who villain Sil, albeit with a better nature and a far less repulsive character. 

Possibly the first Jarman film not to truly wow me (I suspect that I perhaps needed to have a better appreciation of Wittgenstein and his works beforehand) but what did wow me nonetheless was his decision to shoot the film in bold primary colours thanks to Sandy Powell's exceptional costume design. That Jarman was losing his sight to the AIDS virus that ultimately killed him makes his desire to make his film so colourful all the more poignant.

Silent Sunday: Remembrance

Queers

Shown nightly all last week, BBC4's Queers (part of the BBC's Gay Britannia season to celebrate the sixtieth anniversary of the Wolfenden Report) was like a gay version of Alan Bennett's Talking Heads. That's not a criticism by the way: any television monologue since Bennett is bound to draw comparison with his work, but the good news is Queers can take its place alongside it with pride (literally).

Curated by Mark Gatiss (which basically means produced and directed, with the opener The Man on the Platform being scripted by him) these twenty minute dramas are each set in the same pub and chart a course across the last one hundred years to sketch the gay experience in the UK. Uniformly, they are excellent. Each skilfully sketches its character and their world in a way that slowly envelopes and absorbs you without even noticing thanks to both the superb writing and performances and the intimacy that goes hand in hand with stories being told directly to camera. 

Some are of course better than others. I must confess to feeling a slight lull and sag to the middle of the series with the third consecutive night which brought the episodes I Miss The War by Matthew Baldwin and Safest Spot In Town by Keith Jarrett, but the course was immediately righted with a stunning performance by the-national-treasure-in-waiting Gemma Whelan as Bertie the cross-dresser masquerading as a dapper gent in the 1929 set A Perfect Gentleman, penned by Jackie Clune. Other highlights include the series opener, Gatiss' own The Man on the Platform, which features an exquisitely sensitive and well drawn performance from Ben Whishaw as WWI soldier Perce (and who is pleasingly delivered full circle with a brief passing mention in the finale, the 2016 set Something Borrowed by Gareth McLean and starring Alan Cumming as an anxious groom awaiting the wedding day he never expected or indeed dared hope for); Brian Fillis' wryly comic, 1987 set More Anger which stars Russell Tovey as a gay actor who, fearing typecasting as an AIDS sufferer, finds his big break as unstereoptypical gay character Clive in a new soap well intentioned but disappointingly dull; Michael Dennis' touching A Grand Day Out which stars Dunkirk actor Fionn Whitehead as a naive 17 year old up in London for the first time on the night the government voted on the age of consent in 1994; and lastly, Jon Bradfield's 1957 set Missing Alice, which is the only monologue to feature a straight character, the titular Alice played by the marvellous Rebecca Front. Set around the publication of the Wolfenden Report, it tells the tale of a woman married to a homosexual man and how she has slowly come to accept and even enjoy his life. It's so beautifully written and so superbly performed, you really could have spent a whole 90 minutes or more in Front's company. 

This beautiful, simple yet touching series also boasted a score to match, thanks to a piano instrumental theme tune from singer/songwriter and Elton John's protege Bright Light Bright Light, aka Rod Thomas

The full series is still available to view on the iPlayer

Silent Sunday: Up the Junction (My Neighbourhood)

Mary Pickford's Pussy

Move along now. Nothing else to see.

Silent Sunday: Remembrance

The Monocled Mutineer (1986)

2014 saw the centenary of the outbreak of World War One and the coalition government of Conservatives and Liberal Democrats seemed keen to mark the anniversary, though the intentions of the latter party were predictably out of step. Prime Minister David Cameron claimed that they wanted a “commemoration that, like the Diamond Jubilee celebrations, says something about who we are as a people”, and was rightly and immediately condemned for suggesting that the deaths of 38 million people were something to celebrate. It was the kind of comment that hinted at the mindset of the Tory establishment. It has recently come to light that, in 2012, the then Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt expressed dissatisfaction with Danny Boyle and his Olympic Opening Ceremony team for not representing the might and triumphs of the British military throughout our history, arguing that the NHS segment could be dropped with the same attitude and manner that we have seen him undertake his current stewardship of Health. But perhaps most pointedly of all then Education Secretary Michael Gove claimed that the opinion we have come to hold about The Great War is nothing but a lie spun by "left wing academics...degenerating virtues such as patriotism, honour and courage"

This fear the Tory establishment feel about the truth being told about the horrors, the futility and the downright stupidity of WWI isn't new, the same attitude was rife in the mid '80s under Thatcher's rule, and the thorn in its side was the BBC's The Monocled Mutineer, a drama series written by Boys from the Blackstuff author Alan Bleasdale (from a 1978 book by William Allison and John Fairley) concerning the exploits of Percy Toplis, a deserter, an imposter of officers and presumed murderer (he was tried in absence for the murder of cab driver Sidney George Spicer - the first British inquest in modern times to do so) who was gunned down in Penrith following a two month manhunt instigated by the Home Office in 1920. Like the book, Bleasdale's series depicted Toplis as a leading participant in the Étaples Mutiny  of 1917.

"The Étaples 'mutinies' amounted to no more than a few days of disorder' a little disrespect to officers and some loudly-voiced demands for humane treatment. The army reacted briskly. It restored discipline by bringing in unaffected troops. It removed the cause of discontent by replacing the worst of the staff with wise men. That is about all there was to the British Army 'mutinies' of the 1914 - 1918 war."

So argued military historian Sir John Desmond Patrick Keegan OBE FRSL in the Daily Telegraph (Torygraph) on September 9th, 1986. Not a very good military historian if you ask me; his claim of 'a few days disorder' is an outright lie as, after a fractious summer in 1917 in which complaints regarding how troops were being treated at the Étaples training camp known as 'The Bull Ring' were routinely ignored, things came to ahead on September 9th of that year, when the mutiny exploded and remained in force until mid-October. This is recorded fact by many sources, including no less a figure than Vera Brittain in her book Testament of Youth which recounts her time with the Voluntary Aid Detachment at Étaples; "the mutiny was due to repressive conditions......and was provoked by the military police". The Monocled Mutineer depicts Military Police and Instructors at the camp 'crucifying' soldiers (tying them to posts on the parade ground) soldiers for various misdemeanors, and doling out savage beatings, instances I imagine Keegan and the like would vehemently refute. The real truth about what occurred in Étaples should by rights come to public light next year in 2017 when classified documents have reached the 100 year embargo for their release. However, it was discovered by the House in 1978 following the publication of Allison and Fairley's claims, that  all the records of the Étaples Board of Enquiry had been destroyed long since - this is nothing more than an establishment whitewash and cover up.

Keegan's words were just the start of the controversies that dogged the transmission of The Monocled Mutineer exactly thirty years ago. But there was more going on here than just the disgruntled criticisms from so-called historians. In 1986, the BBC was under fire from the Tory government in the same way that the corporation has been on shaky ground with the present government with regards to its Charter renewal. Throughout 1985 and '86, the BBC was subjected to the Peacock Committee, which was purportedly set up to decide the future of the corporation, but in reality saw Norman Tebbit instigate a McCarthy-esque style witch hunt throughout the BBC, monitoring its staff, output and ethos for 'left wing bias' which saw, amongst others, police raids at BBC Scotland in relation to the planned and subsequently banned programme concerning the Zircon signals intelligence satellite, a dossier suggesting the BBC news team were biased against America in their coverage of their bombing raids on Libya and 100 Tory MP's sign a motion for"the restoration of proper standards at the BBC" and the sacking of DG Alisdair Milne. 

The Daily Mail, ever the bastion of right wing ire, launched a vitriolic campaign against The Monocled Mutineer that must have made Thatcher and Tebbit proud. They especially went to town over the claims that official records show that Toplis' regiment was en route to India during the Étaples mutiny, and that there is no actual evidence in existence that shows Toplis played a part in the mutiny or that he was absent from his India-bound regiment at this time. In defence of the rising criticism and derision the programme faced, the BBC's director of television Bill Cotton and the series producer Richard Broke admitted to "small examples of dramatic licence" having been taken, but argued that the drama spoke of "the greater truth about World War I". But the damage had been done, not least because BBC Worldwide, the advertising arm of the corporation, had shot themselves in the foot by inaccurately representing Bleasdale's series as "a true-life story" in its marketing and promotional campaigns. The Tories had their wish granted and Alistair Milne was unceremoniously ousted from the BBC, whilst The Monocled Mutineer has been repeated just once in 30 years, and that was in the summer of 1988 - two years after its original broadcast. The series itself wasn't even released to DVD until 2007 and anyone expecting to see the programme form a part of the BBC's commemorations for WWI between now and 2018 need only look to the current mindset of the government for their answer. It ain't gonna happen.

Alan Bleasdale was originally loathe to write the series. Claiming he didn't do adaptations, he avoided all attempts by the BBC to coax him into staging it from 1981 through to the mid '80s. He only changed his mind when he recalled that his own grandfather died in WWI six months before his father was born and that - and this is what really resonates with me, what I feel is actually crucial to understanding the whole story about The Monocled Mutineer and the reaction and backlash it faced - he felt that he had "studied history books people in power had wanted me to read" and had "never learned what it was like for a common man to go to war, and a common soldier to go through those times". By the latter half of the twentieth century the tide was finally turning and the accurate notion of 'lions led by donkeys' was at last becoming accepted fact. By 1986, seventy years after the conflict, Alan Bleasdale, and others that came after him, finally felt able to seek out the truth for themselves, to think for themselves, and to get that message across to the masses to ensure we never have to endure such catastrophic folly again because, as he told the Radio Times "It's a costume drama, with something to say about the times we live in". It is that freedom to think for ourselves that the established order of this country would rather we did not have, should they need to lead us lions with as much gross incompetence as they can muster once again. 

Percy Toplis utterly fascinates me, having read the Allison and Fairley book as a teenager (I only vaguely recall seeing The Monocled Mutineer on TV in either '86 or '88 - I know my dad watched it but I was of course too young to rightly understand the situation) and although the received wisdom now has it that he wasn't involved in the mutiny, I remain uncertain. I may be being naive here, but though there's no evidence he was in Étaples, there's equally precious little evidence he was with his regiment at that time either. If the man was a notorious deserter, surely he could have left his troop before they boarded for India and taken himself Étaples, where he had previously hidden out in the forests around the region with other deserters, pacifists and socialists? And why did the Home Office effectively run such a massive manhunt for someone the authorities deemed guilty of murder? Why was his funeral held in private, his family lied to and turned away, and why was he buried in an unmarked grave? I just think the whole thing is a huge cover up and that, as we have seen, it is all too easy to cry 'left wing propaganda' when the right wing establishment don't want to be embarrassed.

The Monocled Mutineer remains one of the must-watch TV series ever produced by the BBC, and one of the most pivotal and polished from the 1980s (not bad for a decade that also brought us Edge of Darkness) it boasts a central performance from Paul McGann as the anti-hero Toplis who takes the notes Bleasdale gave him to play it as a cross between Cool Hand Luke and John Lennon and runs with it beautifully to deliver a charismatic, multi-dimensional career-best turn. But above all this is just an incredibly deep and well textured piece of writing that continues to provoke thought and debate to this very day.

Silent Sunday: Remembrance

Out On Blue Six : Boney M.

Was (Ra Ra) Rasputin really Russia's greatest love machine?

Well, as the photo above proves*, he did have a massive cock!

*There's some debate as to whether the preserved penis really did belong to The Mad Monk.

Oh, those crazy Russians

End Transmission

Theme Time : Ennio Morricone - The Life & Times of David Lloyd George

I was reminded of this particular theme tune thanks to one of this week's Top of the Pops repeat on BBC4 (from 16th April 1981) which saw Legs and Co make a move away from their usual scantily clad 'one for the dads' choreography, to deliver this rather sweetly earnest performance as an accompaniment to Morricone's track.

 

Although written in 1971 for the film Maddalena (though some aspects of the melody appeared in Morricone's piece Invito All Amore three years earlier in the Sergio Carbucci spaghetti western The Great Silence) the track Chi Mai (Italian for 'whoever') has been recycled many times over for film and television, and it actually appeared twice in 1981, as the soundtrack to the Jean Paul Belmondo film Le Professionnel and as the theme for The Life and Times of David Lloyd George; an epic 9-part BBC political biography of the British Liberal politician and statesman starring Philip Madoc. It is off the back of that series, that the BBC released the track and Chi Mai entered the UK charts swiftly afterwards, reaching number 2 at its peak. Because of that notable success, it truly deserves its link to the vintage BBC drama.

Chi Mai has also been used in numerous advertisements, in the 2002 film Asterix and Obelix: Mission Cleopatra and had previously been heard to British TV viewers in the 1978 series An Englishman's Castle starring Kenneth More, which has recently been released on DVD.

Silent Sunday : Nurse

Suffragette (2015)

For some time I was labouring under the misapprehension - and I don't know why - that Stephen Frears was directing Suffragette. Watching it today, I've come to the conclusion that it's a shame he didn't: because he wouldn't have felt the need to have handheld wobbly cam at the most inopportune moments. It's an incredibly frustrating choice from director Sarah Gavron and is, unfortunately, just one of many choices that make this a terribly disappointing, missed opportunity of a movie.

Sarah Gavron and scriptwriter Abi Morgan have previously worked together on the big screen with Brick Lane which, tantalisingly, never achieved the potential it promised. This seems a common failing with Morgan as a writer - I was a fan of her BBC2 series The Hour (the stars of which Romola Garai and Ben Whishaw appear here) and felt terribly disappointed when the BBC chose to axe it, though despite my enjoyment of it I could understand the corporations reasoning. All too often it fumbled the catch, only ever hinting at perfection. In the end the BBC just grew bored of waiting for that promise to arrive. It's a shame, but understandable. You would think that Morgan, the writer responsible for the brilliant and polemical Sex Traffic - still the best thing she has ever done - would come into her own here with the story of the British suffrage movement in the 1900s, but she offers up here an emotionally manipulative, scant and somewhat hollow gallop through key points in the Pankhurst led struggle.

Set in the East End of London in 1912, the film focuses on Maud Watts played by Carey Mulligan, a laundry worker who becomes involved in the suffragette movement almost by accident just as her new found sisters step up their policy of direct action.  Maud is the epitome of an audience 'in'; she is shown to have little interest in politics and isn't especially concerned by the lack of a voice that she and her fellow women have in society. She is simply a hardworker who is totally committed to her family, her husband Sonny (Whishaw) and her sickly infant son, George. When she agrees to accompany her militant co-worker Violet (the brilliant Anne-Marie Duff) to the House of Commons to speak up for the movement to Lloyd George, Maud finds herself suddenly having to take Violet's place and, in describing her life, the scales fall from her eyes. She realises how needlessly unfair and how hard her life has been. Suddenly the key events in her life - her mother dead by the time she was just four years old, from an accident at work, and her routine sexual abuse at the hands of a repulsive overseer (Geoff Bell) - take on new meaning as she becomes rightly convinced that women are seen as second class citizens. As a result, political activity begins to dominate her life, to the detriment of her private life. Cast out from both home and community, disgusted by her activism, Maud has to endure the emotional trauma of having her son kept away from her - the law at the time counting solely in the patriarch's favour - and ultimately adopted without her consent. These increasing cruelties only serve to spur her on, proving to her just how important the fight for equal rights for women is.  

Unfortunately it is here that accuracy is given over in favour of emotional manipulation. Morgan portrays Maud as an exile because of her beliefs when, in reality, the East End of London was - like many working class industrial cities and towns - extremely militant hubs where it was far more likely that political activists were the majority rather than the minority depicted here. Equally the men of such an area were just as active in politics and unionisation and they gave their wholehearted support to the WSPU, whose members would be their wives, mothers, sisters and daughters. But Morgan and Gavron chose to depict all the working class menfolk as little more than moustache twiddling chauvinistic villains. Whishaw is shown to be spineless, whilst Bell is a sexual predatory abuser. Only the middle class husband of Helena Bonham Carter's professional lady is shown as a sympathetic comrade in arms - another example of that objectionable and all too common distortion of historical accuracy which depicts only the well educated, intelligent and professional to be politically active and aware when compared to their working class number. It is they who show those less fortunate, those suffering the harshest, the way. Hmmm....

Worst of all though is the way the film fails to accurately show the aims and intentions of the suffragettes. I never felt like I truly got an appreciation of just why the right to vote was so passionately fought for by these women beyond Morgan's glib domestic angle, depicting a family being torn apart because of an injustice within the law of the land. Equally, the hardships and cruelties many suffragettes endured for their campaign is barely dealt with - most notably the imprisonment and hunger strikes, which are briefly shown and of which, their impact is ignored completely. For a film called Suffragette, precious little is actually about the Suffragette movement itself, weirdly.

Much has been made of Meryl Streep's role as Emily Pankhurst (though, for me, it's like Comic Strip's The Strike has finally come true - in that Jennifer Saunders played Meryl Streep playing Arthur Scargill's wife in a Hollywood movie about the miners strike of '84 and we laughed, now it's a reality people embrace!) but I must point out this is a very fleeting appearance - even less than Judi Dench Shakespeare in Love - so if you're a Streep fan, you will be disappointed. Much of the film rests on the shoulders of Carey Mulligan, an accomplished and engaging actress but, as I say, the role is little more than an 'in', with all the underdeveloped character that implies. She comes to life in the scenes in which her views are challenged and contrasted by Brendan Gleeson's Irish detective charged with pursuing members of the WSPU and who has his own experience of people fighting for a cause, but these scenes are unfortunately few and far between. I much preferred Anne-Marie Duff and, in the crucial role of the tragic Emily Davison, Natalie Press, an actress whose curious and occasionally quirky and unreadable style is ideally suited to the ambiguity surrounding her character, but whose impact is lessened once more by a lack of substantial characterisation there in the script. Helena Bonham Carter also provides assured and attractive but ultimately somewhat empty support thanks again to the script's routine failings in fleshing out its characters.

Suffragette just about scrapes 3 stars out of 5 because it is about something important, but it really should have been better - the women it attempts to celebrate deserve much better. If you want to watch something more substantial about the suffragette movement I would recommend the excellent 1970s serial Shoulder to Shoulder - stupidly, this has never been released on DVD but it is available to view on YouTube. Kudos though for this film including the line about Lloyd George's summer house being paid for by the owner of the News of the World....same as it ever was, same as it ever was.

A quick note about viewing this in the cinema - I rarely go to the cinema these days and when i do I go in the afternoon because it's usually quiet and near empty. Suffragette, perhaps because of its subject matter or its cast, drew in a surprisingly good number in the screening despite the time of day and it was a veritable sea of snowy white hair, coughing and comments. I used to say I didn't go to the cinema much because of younger cinemagoers ruining it for everyone. I now actually think the older generation are the worst culprits; mobile phones went off and needless comments were spoken loudly (in a scene where Anne-Marie Duff appears with a battered and bruised face, the woman behind me felt the need to point out "Someone's beat her up" and, in a later scene, when Helena Bonham Carter's husband, fearing for her health, secures her inside her storeroom, she said "He's locked her in") However, as the credits rolled I was amused to hear the gasps of astonishment at the chronological order in which women around the world received the right to vote. Switzerland - a trivia question I have enjoyed for years - was rewarded the loudest audible expression of disbelief: "1971?! Nineteen seventy one?!" Yes folks, 1971. And only now are Saudi Arabia heading towards equality.

Stocker's Copper (1972)

Set against the acrimonious and unsuccessful three month long Cornish clay miners strike in 1913, the 1972 Play For Today, Stocker's Copper tells the story of the seemingly avuncular and jovial PC Griffith (a pre Blake's 7 Gareth Thomas) who find himself billeted in the cottage of the striking miner Manuel Stocker and his wife, Alice (Bryan Marshall and Jane Lapotaire) when his squad of specially trained Welsh police officers are sent to the villages to keep the peace. Despite such initial reservations both Griffith and Stocker manage to rub along together well, listening to his keenly told stories of previous disputes or his habit of breaking into song, and generally treating the initial summery stages of the strike as little more than a holiday. But when blackleg labour becomes more and more predominant, threatening to break the strikers stronghold and desires for 25 bob a week plus union recognition, Stocker et al have no choice but to march on the clay pit to picket the work. However, it soon becomes apparent that the authorities feel they have no choice too and, despite being a lawfully assembled picket, the Riot Act is read and ultimately oppressive violence ensues with both Stocker and Griffith in the thick of it. 

Seen today, thirty years after the miners strike of 84/85 arguably this countries last biggest industrial dispute, Tom Clarke's play has an impressive, almost chilling resonance as indeed it must have had when it was last broadcast on television by Channel 4 in the late 80s or early 90s. It's impossible not to view the actions of these imposing beetle black figures representing the toughest and the 'best' of the Guards trained troops of strike breakers without thinking of the similar illegality of the bused in officers of the met just over a 100 years later at atrocities such as Orgreave. Jack Gold's direction ensures several scenes linger long in the memory, most notably that of the Welsh officers ostensibly at play, but in reality limbering up, playing a game of rugby against the backdrop of the idle clay pits. As the score is taken over by ominous, thunderous percussion and the villagers and strikers watch the action it's left to one old sage to remark that they hadn't come all this way to just offer them a game.

A ropey copy on YouTube is pretty much the only way you can view this powerful, important and still relevant film. To get the BBC to consider repeating some of these classic Play For Today's please sign the petition I started here

Hindle Wakes (1952)

This production of Hindle Wakes by director Arthur Crabtree is the fourth and final film adaptation of Stanley Houghton's controversial play from the 1910s, having been produced twice in the silent era and as a very early talkie in the late 20s. This 1952 version is, to my shame, the only adaptation I have seen.

Houghton's play was a very bold and thought provoking piece that I suppose pre-empted much of what was to become known as 'kitchen sink' drama by a good forty years. It raised for perhaps the very first time the notion of  'The Single Standard' between sexes and daringly asked is it right that women should be denied the same sexual freedom and liberation as men?  I really wish I'd seen one or indeed all of the earlier adaptations prior to this because any controversy or boldness from the actions of characters on display here, specifically our heroine the mill worker Jenny played by the strikingly beautiful Lisa Daniely, are somewhat lost and dated by the 1952 it was made and set in; the edginess to the tale somewhat overtaken by the changes in post war society. As a result it works slightly better as a generation gap drama, comparing Jenny's freedom with the consternation and embarrassment it brings to her parents played by Leslie Dwyer and Joan Hickson, a solid working class couple who still hold on to the Victorian values they were no doubt brought up with.

More specifically, where this production utterly fails is in the depiction of the everyday working class mill workers. Daniely may as I say be beautiful but she is woefully miscast here as Jenny - her cut glass accent and debutante air offers no contrast whatsoever to Brian Worth's Alan Jeffcote, well-to-do son of the mill's owner she meets on a work's trip to Blackpool for the Wakes holiday and embarks on an illicit affair down in Llandudno with, nor her rival for his affections from 'the right class', the daughter of a rival mill owner. If Houghton's play pre-empts the kitchen sink drama, Crabtree's film resolutely fails to do the same and when the more realistic Albert Finney and Shirley Anne Field pushed themselves forward centre stage for Saturday Night and Sunday Morning eight years later it felt like a breath of fresh air.

I can imagine the earlier adaptations being more charged simply because they were made at a time when the controversy was still palpable. By 1952 Hindle Wakes was too late to capitalise on them and far too early to serve as a period piece that audiences can sympathise with the misfortune of a less enlightened age when independent and strong women who defied convention were dismissed as little more than tarts - that potential was filled with a 1970s TV adaptation. As it stands this production is not without some nostalgic value and its fun for a northerner like me to see Blackpool at a more prosperous, golden era. The cast also includes Bill Travers, Michael Medwin and Rita Webb.