First Renoir's Boudu Saved From Drowning (1932) which is the earliest of his films available from Lovefilm. The film stars Michel Simon as Boudu, a tramp whom bookseller Lestingois saves from drowning and adopts into his household; there the anarchic Boudu causes great disturbance before he wins the lottery; having married the maid the whole household embarks on a boating trip, …
Author: nick2209
Anarcho-socialist, Birmingham City Women supporter, lover of Americana/Country, Byron fan, atheist - and clinical depressive, which should be unrelated to foregoing although you have to wonder!
November Miscellany
Overall November has been another good month despite some bad days at the end compounded by a resurgence of back trouble. This month's miscellany is dominated by television (and quite a bit of it bad television at that!) but that is partly because I have hived off comments on other forms to separate blogs ('Three …
Three Courtesans
By one of those strange co-incidences in the course of six days we saw three very different productions, in three different art forms (theatre, cinema and opera), in all of which courtesans were the central characters. This was certainly completely unplanned, but provides the chance for a blog which includes some reflections on the whole …
On The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp
Powell and Pressburger's Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, with which I have opened my PandP retrospective, is my favourite film. I do not make this claim lightly or easily. and recognise that there are times when I would advance the claims of other contenders for this title. It is, however, the only contender which is also, …
Scott’s Tales of a Scottish Grandfather
Walter Scott's Tales of a Scottish Grandfather takes as a paratext the idea that he is explaining Scottish history to his grandson. In fact the degree to which Scott remembers this varies - he certainly slips in the odd reference to 'your grandfather' or 'your grandfather's grandfather', but for the majority of the time it is clear that …
A Brief Introduction to Alexander Herzen
I have been reading over the past few months Alexander Herzen's My Past and Thoughts - or, more accurately, an abridgement of My Past and Thoughts. It is a book about which I could, and probably will, write at inordinate length. Herzen is a companion for life. But I wanted to start by attempting to explain why I …
Crabbe – Tale 10: The Lover’s Journey
The Lover's Journey, in contrast to the three Tales which preceded it, is most definitely not part of any group in terms of its subject or theme. It is a poem which could very easily be taken out of the context of The Tales. It is also in many ways a sunny, happy poem and thus …
October Miscellany (2009)
Continuing with Caryl Churchill I reached Light Shining in Buckinghamshire (1977). I thought from the title that this was likely to be among my favourite of Churchill's plays and so it proved. Using her ensemble techniques she covers the radicalization, and then the confrontation with and suppression of the radicals, which occurred during the course of …
Berlin on Turgenev
In 1970 Isaiah Berlin delivered the Romanes Lecture in Oxford under the title 'Fathers and Children - Turgenev and the Liberal Predicament' ; the text is contained in the 1975 Penguin edition of Fathers and Sons. It is deeply fascinating not only for the insights which it gives into Turgenev, a man whom Berlin found …
October Movies
Continuing my Godard viewing I come to his second film Le Petit Soldat (1960 but not released until 1963) starring Michel Subor and Anna Karina. The reason for the three-year delay between the making and release of the film was due to the fact that the French Government banned it because of its sensitive political content. Subor plays …
Moving Toyshop 