Herrschaft des Verbrechens

I've always had a soft spot for the early work of Fritz Lang, partly perhaps because they were such standard fare in the film clubs of my youth. Never a season without Metropolis or M, it seems like.

Metropolis even had a commercial run in the theatres in the mid '80s with a spanking new and remarkably loud and fairly ghastly score by Giorgio Moroder. I'm still not quite over that experience, to be perfectly honest. But hope does spring eternal, or so they say.

Othet stout Lang favorites are the fascinating international spy thriller Spione (1928) and the massive historical fantasy Die Nibelungen (1924), in two parts, which draws on the same material as Wagner's Ring cycle (or the last two operas Siegfried and Götterdämmerung, to be specific), Das Nibelungenlied, though Fritz does the mediaeval epic more justice than did old Richard. The special effects are pretty spectacular. In their day they were almost beyond belief. I've only ever seen it on video so I probably can't imagine how spectacular the effects really are. But the intrepid Siegfried slaying the dragon works whatever the format.

Two of his early films I've never come across (well there are more, of course, but these two irk me no end): the very early adventure yarn in two parts Die Spinnen (1921) and the absolute science fiction classic Frau im Mond (1929) that defined the way space crafts and interstellar travel would look on film for decades to come. Even the Moon got its definitive look by Lang and wasn't redefined (prior to the landing, that is) until along came Stanley Kubrick almost exactly 40 years later.

Now that I come to think there are a couple of things that the Lang films that I like have in common. They were made in Germany (and hence in German) and, perhaps most importantly, written by Thea von Harbou. Harbou's name may ring no bells today but in the '20s and '30s she was a pretty big fish, a screenwriter, a succesful novelist, and she even directed a few films. Harbou and Lang were married for a while and the time of their marriage constituted the golden age in both their professional careers. They made quite an ideal team. The scripts were extremely well balanced dramaturgically and featured everything a good film needed: exciting locations, mysterious circumstances, riveting chases, exotic killings, a smattering of esoteric philosophy, extremely modern or even futuristic contraptions, and a solid plot that moves with fierce speed and is told mostly visually. Harbou provided the setting and the conceptual frame, Lang the innovative visual splendours. As a mix it was well-nigh perfect.

So perfect that it was sometimes hard to notice that the scripts didn't bear a closer inspection as they were essentially puerile nonsense. Metropolis, for instance, looks grand, bold, even intellectual, but makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. It's just hokey. A lovely movie and deservedly a true classic but still nonsense. The images, however, live on.

Das Testament des Dr. Mabuse is the perfect Lang-Harbou collaboration. It's a crime story with supernatural elements and even vague but chilling political implications. The mad master criminal Mabuse (first seen in the 1922 movie Dr. Mabuse, der Spieler) has spent the last decade in an asylum, in a state of near catatonia, scribbling nonsense on sheets of paper all day. Yet his crime empire still functions. And seems to be led by him. How?

Now ordinary crime is no longer enough for Mabuse, he's striving for world domination by the means of Herrschaft des Verbrechens - The Rule of Crime. This he will achieve by chaos. He will wreak so much havoc, instill so much insecurity, reduce society to such a state of fear, anxiety and weakness, that people will welcome him as their leader and do anything he wills. For crime is the true strength of man and anything else is mere weakness. Anybody resisting will be eliminated: "Menschen die eine Gefahr für die Organization bedeuten sind ausnahmlos sofort zu vernichten." The militarily led organization has its own branch to take care of that: the assassination unit Abteilung 2-B.

It might possibly be worth to mention that the movie was made in 1933.

I'm not certain how deliberate and conscious the Nazi references are. To me they seem quite obvious and unambiguous. The criminals cannot but be seen as Nazis as they salute their omnipotent leader by bowing and clicking their heels. They have their Sektions and Abteilungs. The ruthless vocabulary is the same. Vernichtung - annihilation. The ideology of the mastery of crime, the superiority of violence, the supremacy of power - isn't that exactly what the Nazi Party craved and realized? What else was the rulership of the Party during those twelve bleak and abominable years than Herrschaft des Verbrechens? The Rule of Crime?

However, Harbou was quite the Nazi, eventually becoming a member of the Party (though she seems never to have been a racialist or an antisemite). And one does have to bear in mind that Lang was - very early on - well in cahoots with the Party: Die Nibelungens actually being a solid favourite in Nazi circles, indeed even something of a cult movie about the superiority and superhumanity of the Aryan race and its mythical and mystical past. How could it not warm a Nazi heart with blood and gore and brutal sword-fighting and the slaying of dragons and on top of that the Nazi of Nazis: Siegfried? I seem to recall it even having been the favourite movie of one Dr. Goebbels. Lang was well on his way of becoming the official movie director of Das Reich and would certainly have become it, and welcomed the position, had it not been for one unfortunate and rather embarrasing fact: he was Jewish. Even Dr. Goebbels couldn't overlook that slight piece of information in all eternity. So ultimately Lang had to flee the country.

Clearly Harbou and Lang didn't at first quite know what to make of the Nazis. Were they a bunch of thugs and criminals or the saviours of Germany? They were sensitive artists, they could see and sense things others couldn't. They seem also to have been ever so slightly opportunistic and ready to avert their eyes from the truth about Nazism and the banal horrors it entailed, were the Party willing to bestow favour upon them. And in fact the dynamic duo and their cinema would have been an invincible propagandistic tool for the Nazis, far superior than poor old Leni Riefenstahl, because they knew how to entertain, bewitch and lead the masses on. There is always a slight but unsound fascist undertone in any Harbou-Lang movie, a hypnotic element that disturbs one but also beckons. Can you find a more fascist piece of cinema than Metropolis?

Das Testament des Dr. Mabuse didn't best please the Nazis. Goebbels was no fool. He saw what it was and didn't like it one bit. Dr. Mabuse's plans were almost exactly those of the Nazis, likewise his meas of realizing his plan. Goebbels delayed the premiere but didn't ban the movie.

Not much point, really. They already were in power.

There's a brilliant scene in the movie, by the way, where a handful of Mabuse's men get cornered in a flat with no way out. One of the criminals goes mental and declares that no one gets in or out - if anyone goes near the door they are going to get it. Better for everyone to die inside the flat than surrender. Again Vernichtung. The way he speaks, or rather shouts and barks in semihysteria, bears a striking resemblance to the way Hitler makes his speeches. In the end they can't keep the police out so the Adolfian crook ends his life by shooting himself. Eerie echoes of the bunker, I always think. 12 years before the fact. Does gives one quite the willies.

Das Testament des Dr. Mabuse was the last movie Lang ever made in Germany. One day, after having received a warning, he took the train to Paris and didn't return. Thea von Harbou stayed on in Germany but had a pretty unspectacular career without Lang. On their own they were never much good. I shudder to think what villanous, dastardly, megalomaniac propaganda movies they might have made together in and for Nazi Germany had Lang's Jewishness been hushed up or overlooked

I'd also very much like to see them.

Becoming Hyde

Rouben Mamoulian's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931) isn't the first movie version of Stevenson's classic novel. Nor is it the last, obviously, not by a long chalk. It is however pretty phenomenal in its way, better by far than most of its successors: the special effects are in fact quite stunning - not only for its time but any which way one cares to look at them. They convince even today, even the jaded viewer who's seen everything done digitally cannot help but emit a slight gasp at the sheer audacity of the effects. How ever did they do it?

The angelic Dr. Jekyll transforms into the beastlike Mr. Hyde in front of the camera with nary a cut and with almost an unpleasant realism; the clean and sober, suave and debonair charmer Frederick March becomes, before our very eyes, a rough and gruff protosimian creature with hair sprouting in unruly tufts in the most unlikely places and a forehead lower than that of a Neanderthal. (I would in fact be slightly surprised if the grotesquely gorillaesque comic book version of Hyde by messieurs Moor & O'Neill didn't owe more than a nodding thanks to March's precursor.)

An achievement indeed.

Every single Jekyll & Hyde movie has to show how Jekyll painfully morphs into Hyde, and show it as graphically and in as much detail as possible. Makes or breaks the movie. Most of them do it abominably badly. Which of course kills off any credibility.

Jekyll turning into Hyde is the crowning moment of the story, has been since the earliest theatre days, probably. It's a wonderful piece of show biz at its best.

I happen to think it pretty redundant.

Even cataclysmically wrong.

It's a brilliant metaphor of man's Manichean duality, ever duelling within us. When examined closer it becomes, well, a bit dodgy at best. Its clearly a concept of and for the mind, to be visualised by the mind's eye but not seen. When put on stage or on film it immediately becomes crude and unconvincing - nothing more than crass showmanship. It is not Hyde's physical appearance that is essential but his soul. His outer visage is but an aspect of his soul and its reflection, of course, but focusing so doggedly on his brutish and apelike physique - and the almost magic transformation - makes it all seem so very shallow. Not at all like Stevenson's immortal poetic vision.

The quintessence of the tale is far subtler.

Hyde's atavistic looks are a metaphor for his black and crooked soul, not the focus of the entire tale. Splitting Jekyll into two is a magnificent tool whereby Stevenson tells his poignant tale of good and evil. What works so magnificently well on the page becomes self-indulgent when we see it. What is subtle becomes banal. What is real becomes improbable.

Which, in my view, is why all movie versions of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde are failures. And are bound to be so.

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is a gripping tale of the soul. Almost a parable. It cannot be taken too literally. It belongs in the shadows of the subcoscious. Make a realistic version of it and its meaning fades away. And what is left is merely an empty shell, a fairly entertaining story about a doctor who meddles with things "man is not meant to know."

And that's one of the biggest bores there is.

I'm not saying it would be entirely impossible to make a good and true movie (or theatre) version of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. I've just never come across any.

What I am saying is: you can't beat the book. Don't even try.

"Ich will Jesum selbst begraben"

Otto Klemperer's St. Matthew Passion. Not, I fear, everybody's cup of tea. It's so so slow that it never seems to end - the man just stretches it to the point of it being slightly ludicrous and far beyond. A lot of people seem to loathe it intensely, partly because it just isn't kosher meaning authentic. The tempi are all wrong, wrong, horribly wrong. A piece of phony romantic crap, is what many might call it. A grave sin that in the age of the blessed St. Leonhardt and the beatific St. Harnoncourt.

Of this I had absolutely no idea when I purchased it. The price seemed reasonable, even fair, the cast pretty dashed nice: Peter Pears, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, Christa Ludwig, Nicolai Gedda, Walter Berry. Pretty dashed nice? I mean superb, I mean fairly stellar actually.

Had a quick listen in the record shop, seemed okay, not that I really paid much attention - I mean St. Matt is St. Matt innit? - no time for anything more than a few self-evident bars: had to be somewhere else for something ultimately unimportant and meaningless - no time to loose, as Monty Python so wisely teaches us.

Then, at home, a nasty shock.

What is this rubbish?

Is it even St. Matthew?

Doesn't sound like it.

Not even remotely.

It was. Some snatches of it I seemed to recognize vaguely, through a glass darkly as it were, others were just plain bizarre and deliberately perverse. And the whole fabric of the piece was all wrong. Stretch it too far, timewise, and it becomes shapeless, formless, a hideous grotesque heap of jumbled jarring notes with no connection whatsoever to the notes around them. It falls apart. Becomes a travesty, in fact.

However, I had purchased it, paid good money for it, and there was nothing physically wrong with the CD, so taking it back didn't seem a gentlemanly option. A clear case of lumping it, then. Alas and alack, poor little me.

Before I condemned it to eternal damnation I had another listen. Didn't seem quite as bad the second time around. Still pretty bad, though. Probably just imagining the slight decrease in absolute abysmality (if there is such a word, which I seriously doubt). The third time I played it I was no longer certain of its glorious ghastliness. So I had to listen some more. Ended up not playing much anything else between Christmas and New Year. Which is pretty much when I found myself hooked on it, once and for all.

And other, more authentic, renderings of the piece started to sound - well odd. What's the hurry? Where's the fire?

Now Klemperer seems to be quite the norm for me. It's majestic tempi seem just right to elicit every ounce of feeling from the score. And the slowness is slow no longer. It becomes something else, it very much reaches beyond. Zum Raum wird hier die Zeit, wrote Wagner in his Parsifal: Here time becomes space. The slower it flows the more solid it becomes, the more lucid, the more powerful.

The piece is, in fact, in its soul-baring simplicity, a prolonged psalm, an incantation, capturing the essence of not only religion but humanity as well. Somewhere between the lines I seem to hear Klemperer's personal anguish: the anguish of having lived a Jew through the Nazi era, the horror of the Concentration Camps and the Holocaust, the decline and fall of the entire Western Civilization - with The Bomb as the delicious cherry on the cake - the loss of any kind of faith in any kind of future.

And yet . . .

Yet it's one of the warmest, kindest, most humane performances one can imagine. The human spirit will prevail, must prevail. Does prevail. There can be no other belief for mankind. Klemeperer's St. Matthew is one of the few, very few, pieces of music that make me wonder if indeed there could be anything in religion after all.

It almost, to misquote Agent Mulder slightly, makes me want to believe.

Almost.

Black Will & Shakebag

"The Lamentable and Trve Tragedie of M. Arden of Feuersham in Kent. Who was most wickedlye murdered, by the meanes of his disloyall and wanton wyfe, who for the loue she bare to one Mosbie, hyred two desparat ruffins Blackwill and Shakbag, to kill him. Wherin is shewed the great mallice discimulation of a wicked woman, the vnsatiable desire of filthie lust and the shameful end of all murderers."

This compelling argument is from the title page of the play Arden of Feversham, published anonymously in 1592. A fascinating play - on several levels.

What strikes me most is how remarkably fresh the play is even today. The best way to describe it is as a solid mix of true crime, hard boiled crime story and pulp. There's no poetry for the sake of poetry in this play. It's all muscular prose and meaty realism. The wife plays around. She and her fancy man hatch a plan. Who needs hubby? Get shot of him and collect the dough. So they hire two pros to do the honours. They snuff him, then it all goes Pete Tong and the accusations fly. Unhappy ends all round. Crime don't pay.

Classic noir. Could have been written in 1952 instead of 1592. And it's based on a true murder case, one that occurred in 1551 and even got a mention in Holinshed's Chronicles.

Another thing that makes a great impression is how the plot and the murder are described. First she tries poison. The victim gets away. Then they hire two murderers. The murderers get a bit iffy but the money's good, too good not to do it. They try a hit. It's a miss. Another attempt. No go. More tension. Third try. Still he lives. Everybody getting seriously jittery. Fourth attempt. Still no joy.

And all the time Arden knows his wife is two timing him. But he has no idea she's trying to off him.

Everybody has complex and conflicting motives. Maybe this isn't such a good idea after all. Arden's wife, however, has paid or bribed Arden's whole household and others with gold and silvery tongued promises. It really is in no one's interest to let the man live. So they don't and at last the victim is almost ripped to shreds - as by Eumenides in a Greek tragedy. It's all a dirty, messy, brutal and vicious business. Like slaughtering a pig. Then there's all the blood, so much blood to get rid of. And it never goes away. That's how they get caught - bloody footsteps leading away from the house, traces of blood inside the house.

The messiness and the viciousness make the play all the stronger and more convincing. Plans are laid. They go awry. Things happen. There are unforeseen consequences. Nothing quite goes how it's supposed to go. Nobody quite acts like they're supposed to act. People have second thoughts. It's all good and well to wish murder, talk murder, plot murder. But a very different thing to actually commit it. In cold blood.

That's one of the things that stand out in the play - the sound psychological characterization of even minor characters.

So, who wrote it?

Kyd? He's a popular candidate. In my opinion no, wasn't Kyd. Too streamlined for him, too straightforward, too - well - lucid. Who? Shakespeare? Would have been pretty early for Shakespeare but not entirely impossible. Though, to be honest, nobody really knows when it was written or first performed. We only know when it was published. The Oxfordians credit it, no surprises there, to the Earl of Oxford, Edward de Vere, who apparently wrote virtually every play in the Elizabethan era. Marlowe? Perhaps the best candidate. He's vicious enough, doesn't go in for useless poetic nonsense and knows how to tell a story to the best effect.

SHAKEBAG: Black night hath hid the pleasures of the day,
And sheeting darkness overhangs the earth,
And with the black fold of her cloudy robe
Obscures us from the eyesight of the world,
In which sweet silence such as we triumph.
The lazy minutes linger on their time,
Loth to give due audit to the hour,
Till in the watch our purpose be complete
And Arden sent to everlasting night.
Greene, get you gone, and linger here about,
And at some hour hence come to us again,
Where we will give you instance of his death.

There definitely does, whoever wrote it, seem to be a strong and somewhat cryptic Shakespearean connection.

Arden. The name of the victim. Arden is one of England's oldest noble families, one of only three (I think) that can trace their noble lineage on the male side to the Saxon days before the Norman conquest. Shakespeare's mother was an Arden. Possibly related to the high and mighty one's, though nobody's ever been able to prove that. On the other hand nobody's ever proved that she definitely wasn't. We just can't say. Still, Arden was her name and her family.

What really gets me, every time, are the names of the murderers. Black Will and Shakebag. Will and Shake? Can this be mere coincidence? Will and Shake murdering an Arden? This, surely, can be no mere accident or happenstance? It beggars disbelief.

Surely the author is having a go at Shakespeare? And if the author is none else than Kit Marlowe that would seem the most natural thing in the world. The experienced veteran Marlowe slipping the loudmouth upstart Shakespeare a juicy one in the seat, as it were.

Maybe Shakespeare even, when he was a young actor, performed the role of Shakebag, as has been speculated. Now there's a happy thought. Maybe that is precisely why Shakebag is called Shakebag (originally he was called Loosebag) - because Will played him. Of course there is not even the slightest evidence for this.

Of course, if it's true that the names of the actual killers, given by Holinshed in his book, were in fact Black Will and Shakebag (as is also claimed; not having read Holinshed I really wouldn't know one way or the other), then that would pretty much ruin my lovely theory.

Still, bit of a coincidence that. A bit thick.

Anyway, Arden of Feversham is one of the best crime stories ever. Is my humble opinion. Whoever wrote it. (And my belated thanks to the very erudite Mr. Dyer, in whose library first I came across and read the play all those years ago.)

I am not what I am

Orson Welles's movie Othello was completed with virtually no budget whatsoever. Welles paid for the movie himself. His funds dried up time and again, which is why it took almost four years to complete it. A little bit at a time. Filming was suspended and then picked up again. He'd star in someone else's movie, take the money and work on Othello, then go away and star in another movie. Like Carol Reed and Graham Greene's The Third Man. Then back to Othello it was. Othello wasn't quite produced shot by shot, but it's a close thing.

The whole project started badly (just after the disaster with his previous movie Macbeth which ended up being cut up and butchered quite severely as the studio didn't much care one way or the other - which is why Welles now felt that he had to have complete control over his film, however long it took to finish): the Italian backer went bankrupt. Iago, Everett Sloane, walked away during the early days of filming. Which meant that a great deal of film had to be re-shot. Sloane had played key roles in his previous movies: Bernstein in Citizen Kane and Bannister in Lady from Shanghai. He'd been with Welles ever since the Mercury theatre and radio days. Apparently there was real tension between the Sloane and Welles. Sloane was fed up with Welles's ego and quite possibly resented him. Maybe he was envious of Welles and his success. Which of course would have worked perfectly on film - Iago resenting and envying Othello (and who else would play the warlike Moor of Venice than Welles himself?). But Sloane decided to call it a day.

When Welles asked Carol Reed to approach James Mason for him for the role of Iago, Reed said Mason was all wrong and suggested the great Irish actor Micheál Mac Liammóir instead. Welles was sceptical but went along. So off the crew was to Morocco where the movie was to be filmed. Where, almost immediately, his Desdemona received a better offer and was out of there like a shot. Welles didn't let that minor setback impede the filming, he just started shooting around Desdemona, until he could get someone else.

Next the project was hampered and even seriously jeopardized by Mac Liammóir's sexual peccadilloes. The homosexual Mac Liammóir had a whale of a time picking up strange men all over the place. He especially enjoyed the company of policemen (and curiously enough quite a lot of them seemed to enjoy his company) and was constantly trying to seduce them. The governor had the film crew under surveillance and insisted that Welles read the reports daily. This embarrassed Welles a great deal. When Mac Liammóir found out that Welles knew exactly what he was up to and with whom he was delighted. It egged him on no end to have an audience for his rompy pompy. When the filming shifted to Venice Mac Liammóir was miserable as the move put an end to his happy carefree love life. He did however manage to have it off with a gondolier in so tempestuous a fashion that the gondolier was knocked right into the Canal Grande and almost drowned. Took a lot of money to hush it up.

Othello was Mac Liammóir's first movie even though he was in his fifties. (His only other notable film was the 1970 spy thriller The Kremlin Letter by John Huston in which Helsinki was tarted up as jolly old Moscow, as usual.) In Ireland he was a big name, a playwright, writer, manager, actor, designer, poet, painter, raconteur. He'd founded the famed Gate Theatre with his partner Hilton Edwards in 1928, played all the big roles, established himself as a stalwart champion of native Celtic culture. He wore an ill fitting black toupee, ever slightly askew, and painted his face a rather startling shade of orange. As if this wasn't quite enough he always wore a lot of mascara. According to Welles he looked like an "unemployed gypsy fiddler who ought to try and pull himself together." It was in fact Mac Liammóir who gave Welles his first professional acting job. That was in Dublin. Welles was sixteen at the time and loafing around the Irish countryside trying to become a painter. Which he soon chucked as he decided he wanted to be an actor instead. So he went to the Gate Theatre, bold as brass, and announced that he was an American actor and wanted a job. He also lied about his age. A complete fraud. Mac Liammóir took him on, maybe because he recognized something in young Welles, him being a complete and utter fraud himself. Mac Liammóir was in fact the ultimate fraud as everything about him was phony. He wasn't really Irish at all. He just made it up. He was a native Londoner called Alfred Willmore who just moved to Ireland, took a fancy to the place, learnt Irish, started using an Irish name, and told everybody that he was Irish. And everybody bought it. Which just goes to show that a successful actor really needs to be a huge fraud. (But fraudulence only succeeds when you're an interesting fraud, otherwise it's just a waste of everybody's time.)

Later the relationship between Mac Liammóir and Welles went sour. When Welles left the Gate he felt he'd been treated shabbily. Mac Liammóir, like Sloane, resented Welles's success and meteoric rise to fame. Who did this upstart boy think he was? Again, a good starting point for Iago and Othello, this mutual and heartfelt hostility and common grudge. You can't buy that stuff.

In 1952, at long last, the movie was finished - just in time for Cannes where it won the Palme d'Or. That didn't cut much ice with American distributors. Othello was released over there in 1955, after Welles had re-cut it and re-dubbed it. His recording equipment had been absolutely terrible and a lot of scenes had been shot with no sound at all. Interestingly enough he removed all of Desdemona's lines and did some of them himself.

Obviously, after all the work, all the effort, all the years he'd invested in the movie, all the money he'd spent on it, the movie was a complete commercial disaster. The critics quite liked it, the audience stayed away in droves.

How does the movie look today? Parts of it are superb, majestic, striking and visually exquisite. A lot of it, especially the bits in Venice, are cramped and poky, the pace is nervous, the images are never allowed to linger and have any sort of effect. There are too many words. The voice overs are horrible. The words eat up the power of the pictures and very much so vice versa. Shakespeare and film is never a happy match. In order really to do justice to Shakespeare on the silver screen one would have to cut most of the lines and tell the story in pictures instead of words, use the visceral poetry of images. Shakespeare's verse is too thick, too complex, too allencompassing, its texture too tightly knit to let anything else breathe in its vicinity. Unfortunately Shakespeare's words conjure up far more potent pictures than any film maker could. So most efforts are usually doomed before they start. Welles might have given it a very decent try, if only he'd have had money and time. It's painfully obvious that there was no money, even less time. He has the scenery, he has the settings, but such is his penury that he cannot stop to make use of them. There is no time. When you cannot show it you have to use a voice over. The dubbing is at times embarrassingly out of synch. Many of the shots are poorly lit, even alarmingly dark, which not only makes them look drab but also makes the action hard to follow even for one familiar with the play. A fight scene that was started in Morocco is finished in Rome. Because Welles ran out of money and had to go get some more.

But Iago is simply splendid. He's cold, scornful, superior. His unnaturally pale face is the face of debauchery and evil, his frigid little eyes as dead as his soul, his voice with it's almost charming (and inauthentic) Irish lilt seductive and seditious. He oozes menace and mendacity from every pore of his being. Many of his best lines are cut, his monologues are all gone, but still his presence is the very heart of the movie. Iago is the movie. He quite steals it away from Welles and his strangely subdued Othello. Even when Welles really gets going there's Iago behind him, lurking in the shadows, whispering, stirring it up, causing affray, undulating evil. That is what he does, what he is: "Even now, now, very now, an old black ram is tupping your white ewe." Or: "Though in the trade of war I have slain men, yet do I hold it very stuff o'the conscience to do no contrived murder: I lack iniquity sometimes to do me service: nine or ten times I had thought t'have yerkt him here under the ribs." Splendid fellow, Iago.

Somewhere around the middle of the film or a bit thereafter things start improving markedly. The shots live and breathe, one gets a definite feel of the tragedy and its participants. This, I imagine, must be because we get scenes that were shot when doom wasn't imminent. When there were still prospects of a kind. And funds. The worst scenes, those shot in Venice, are the one's that open the movie. In them it is clear that all hope is lost.

But the end is good, solid, gripping. Desdemona's death grabs one by the throat, starts choking and won't let go.

Othello could have been Welles's independent masterpiece. Should have been. It isn't.

The Napoleon of Crime

Coming across John Gardner's Moriarty (2008) was a bit of a surprise. I'd heard of his previous Moriarty books from the '70s but never read them. Then I'd sort of all forgotten about them, as in those bygone and faraway days ordering books on the net wasn't an option. And now there was a spanking new one. Brilliant.

Fascinating character, Moriarty. Possibly because he's quite a shadowy figure, used very very sparsely by Doyle in his Holmes tales. In The Final Problem he makes his sinister, coldly menacing entrance - and in the same tale he makes his spectacular exit as well. He is never actually seen by Watson - what little we hear of him is told by Holmes to Watson, and by default, to the reader. Moriarty is a shadow lurking in the fog. He is omnipresent, well-nigh omnipotent and always almost inhumanly absent.

In physical appearance he is quite distinguished, as well befits an academic. "He is extremely tall and thin, his forehead domes out in a white curve, and his two eyes are deeply sunken in his head. He is clean-shaven, pale, and ascetic-looking, retaining something of the professor in his features. His shoulders are rounded from much study, and his face protrudes forward, and is forever slowly oscillating from side to side in a curiously reptilian fashion." The description Holmes gives might, actually, be thought to bear something of a resemblance to himself? The tall gauntness, the bulging forehead, the cold pale cerebralism, the extreme asceticism? "He is the Napoleon of crime, Watson. He is the organizer of half that is evil and nearly all that is undetected in this great city. He is a genius, a philosopher, an abstract thinker. He has a brain of the first order. He sits motionless, like a spider in the centre of its web, but that web has a thousand radiations, and he knows well every quiver of each of them."

Because we know so very little about him we're almost compelled to fill the blanks by ourselves. He's too big a character to be so absent in the Canon. Or is it his absence, or his suspected or even partly sensed presence, that indeed makes him so big?

The description Doyle gives of him is curiously incomplete, even flawed. His name is James Moriarty and he has two brothers - at least one of whom is also called James! Is James, then, a surname? Or do the three brothers share a common name? Rummy, to say the least, jolly rummy.

According to an erudite article by the learned Doylean scholar Owen Dudley Edwards, published in The Journal of The Arthur Conan Doyle Society (Vol. 6: 1995), the name might well hail from Doyle's schooldays at Stonyhurst. There he attended the lessons given by the Jesuits alongside no less than two Moriartys, both winning prizes in mathematics - and one of them a J. Moriarty! James? Would that be too easy an explanation? (It would indeed: when once more I glance through the article I find that Moriarty's name is in fact John and that later he becomes a distinguished barrister, a K.C., and ends up a Lord Justice - there's irony for you!) Fascinatingly enough Edwards also found a Sherlock among the pupils, a Patrick Sherlock, a particularly dim boy according to the Jesuits. So Doyle naming his almost supernaturally clever detective Sherlock may have been nothing less than a huge joke. (Although young Sherlock seems to have had some talent in acting.) But I'm digressing.

In Nicholas Meyer's excellent classic The Seven-Per-Cent Solution Moriarty turns out not to be a master criminal at all, but rather young Sherlock's tutor with whom his mother had an illicit affair, causing Sherlock's father to kill her and then himself. In Robert Lee Hall's pretty nifty Exit Sherlock Holmes Moriarty, like Holmes, turns out to be a genius renegade time traveller from the future. According to an essay by William Leonard in a 1957 issue of The Baker Street Journal (also found in Peter Haining's A Sherlock Holmes Compendium) the horrid professor is no less a personage than count Dracula.

Or was there ever such a man as Moriarty? Because Watson never sees him, because we only ever hear of him, might he not be a pure fabrication? Just something Holmes makes up as he goes a little funny in the head? A distinct possibility, one surmises, especially bearing in mind how like Holmes Moriarty is supposed to be - a veritable black Holmes. Why does he spring Moriarty so suddenly on Watson? Why has Watson never heard of him if he's such a king pin in the London underworld and the great detective's constant adversary? Yet Holmes has never bothered to mention him to Watson, never once. A bit odd, innit? And then Holmes just disappears for three years. How convenient. How bizarre.

Well be that as it may, Moriarty has a huge role in the Sherlockian mythology, particularly when one considers that he's only ever mentioned in three stories: The Final Problem, The Empty House and the novel The Valley of Fear. In the movies, especially the older ones, he's pretty much the stock villain, chewing the carpet and foaming at the mouth like nobody's business.

Gardner approaches Moriarty a little differently, which is quite refreshing really. He strips the character of any and all Sherlockian mythology and makes him a Victorian crime boss. Not a super-villain at all (never mind what the back cover of my paperback claims!). In fact, professor Moriarty isn't even professor Moriarty but his youngest brother the station master who's killed the professor and taken his place - a slightly bizarre twist that. And yes, all three brothers are called James.

Interestingly enough good old Sherlock merits nary a mention in the book. The novel is quite serious and realistic, almost naturalistic, the pace slow and deliberate, the settings elaborate and careful and superbly researched. Gardner knows a lot about Victorian London and its criminal underworld and he's not afraid to let it show. The plot, in short, is as follows: Moriarty has been away for a while and now he returns. Upon his return he finds he has a problem. One of his closest men is a traitor, working for the thoroughly despicable rival crime boss Sir Jack Idell or Idle Jack who's trying to take over Moriarty's turf and businesses.

Some of the subplots are pretty hilarious - like Moriarty's acquiring a dead ringer for the late lamented Prince Albert and using said ringer to produce a set of highly lascivious pornographic pictures with which to blackmail the Queen! Not a really viable idea, as it turns out. Not surprisingly.

But all in all the novel didn't do much for me. The pacing was too slow, the characters lack-luster and plain dull, the plot surprisingly heavy going, almost plodding. I found myself just not caring what happened or to whom. Turned out that Moriarty without Holmes was quite an unglamorous and dull fellow. I might have enjoyed the book as such a great deal more if the protagonist wouldn't have been called Moriarty and if there had been no Holmes connection whatsoever. His shadow is too large, and his presence too powerful even when he isn't present.

Moriarty was published posthumously. Gardner's two previous Moriarty books (Return of Moriarty and Revenge of Moriarty) were published in the '70s. There was supposed to be a trilogy then but he had a row of some sort with his publisher and the third book was never published. Was it, I wonder, written over thirty years ago or quite recently? Would be interesting to know. Haven't read the first two ones, as I already mentioned (don't know if they've ever been re-issued), so I may judge the last book too harshly. Maybe it all makes perfect sense when you've read the entire trilogy. Dunno. Still, bit of a disappointment all said and done.

Ladies in lakes or pools

Dames. They're just shifty. Especially if they're beautiful. Can't trust them in a noir. Not even once. When are fellows gonna learn that? Well, hopefully never. Wouldn't be any noirs if they did, would there?

Been watching a lot of noirs lately. They're pretty good even when they're pretty bad.

Hadn't seen Lady in the Lake, curiously enough. It's one of the earlier Marlowe movies (made in 1947, only a few years after the novel was published) with Robert Montgomery as the director and also, alas and alack, as our hero. Despite that it isn't altogether a worthless movie.

What makes it quite interesting is the direction. Or, actually, the camera work. We see everything through the eyes of Marlowe. The camera is the hero, as it were. Now this idea occurred to Welles also before he made his Citizen Kane. His original idea was to make Conrad's Heart of Darkness precisely that way, have the camera see everything Marlow saw, have the camera be Marlow. Then he abandoned the idea. Don't quite know why. But, having seen Montgomery's Lady in the Lake I have a pretty good idea.

For one thing the camera is far too static. When Marlowe is supposed to turn his head the camera turns - extremely clumsily. Secondly the other actors have to act to the camera the whole time - and do it very stiltedly. The camera doesn't react. It gives no feedback. It doesn't inspire the actors to new heights. And it shows. Everything's pretty wooden. Thirdly the shoots are all like it was theatre. Very static. There's never any life in the shots, Marlowe's pretty much just looking at the other actors as they speak or "act". It quickly becomes a bore.

As for the script, I'm not entirely wild about what they've done to the book. There's a romantic love interested that's quite unnecessary. (Even though it's not bad as such, it just doesn't belong.) And the action is all pretty much indoors. I mean, the títle of the book (and the film!) is Lady in the Lake, and Marlowe doesn't even go up to the lake! He just tells us about it in one of the really clumsy voice-overs the film has to revert to in order to avoid any difficult outdoor shots. Filming up at the cabin would have been utterly impossible. (Thus making the entire premise of the movie slightly questionable.)

Still, a very brave experiment. Got to give them credit for that. I have a gut feeling that Welles pulled the plug on his Heart of Darkness because he realised that it just wasn't a viable project. Interesting idea but couldn't be done. Montgomery probably went ahead because he wasn't savvy enough to realise that.

The dames aren't as bad as they could be, or, indeed, as they rightfully should be. The murderess is only seen in two shortish scenes and the other skirt turns out not to be nearly as nasty as she at first appears. So Marlowe has a soppy, wholly gratuitous and quite boring romance with her. Miss Wonderly she ain't, despite a promising start. But neither is Montgomery Bogart. He isn't even Dick Powell (who's best remembered for his musicals), and that's really saying something.

Otto Preminger's Whirlpool (1949) stars Gene Tierney as a wealthy socialite with deep and serious psychological problems. Preminger and Tierney - now there's a splendid combo if ever there was one, as anyone who's seen Laura can attest to. Whirlpool is nowhere nearly as good as that, but it isn't a bad little number as noirs go. Script by Ben Hecht, which always helps.

And Gene Tierney ain't half bad either. No great surprise there.

The villain of the piece, a delightfully smooth and suave José Ferrer (shortly before he became Cyrano, by the way) in whose mouth even butter wouldn't melt, sees to it that Tierney doesn't get prosecuted for a spot of shoplifting she's done. Scandal is avoided but now Tierney's at the mercy of Ferrer. She believes he's trying to blackmail her and writes him a cheque. He plays it very gently, destroys the cheque and hands her the evidence that proves her guilt. He only wants to help her, he says. She wants to believe him. He then hypnotizes her so that she overcomes her sleeping disorder. Then he hypnotizes her some more and frames her for a murder he commits.

The latter part of the movie doesn't quite hold up, doesn't deliver what the first part promises, and the ending's just too easy and far from convincing. It all becomes a muddle, really. Slightly rewritten this might have made a pretty good episode of Columbo. Funny thing is, Ferrer did later appear in an episode of Columbo. Played the villain, obviously.

Orson Welles' The Lady from Shanghai (1947) may be one of Welles' best movies. I like the mood, the imagery, the settings. The story isn't much to write home about but one hardly notices. Or cares. It just doesn't matter. Rita Hayworth is about as beautiful as she's ever been and she is the movie. No question about that.

Nice as well to see a lot of familiar faces from the Mercury era, a lot of them having worked with Welles even in the old radio days. Which makes for a tight cast working together like clockwork.

The final scene with the mirrors is considered a classic. To me it's slightly tacky and far from being genius. It works but is scarcely as profound as the diehard Wellesians would have it. But. It is memorable. It is what everyone remembers about the movie. So I may well be wrong.

Finally there's Detour (1945), a minor cult classic by Edgar G. Ulmer. Here's another one I'd managed to avoid for far too long. Detour is a tight and nasty little shocker, a veritable short story of a movie, only about an hour long. I'd love to say there's not an ounce of fat anywhere in the movie. Truthfully, I'd cut several early scenes as they really don't add anything to the movie and just hold up the action.

Tom Neal plays a New York pianist who's off to L.A. to see his girlfriend. He's short on money so he hitchhikes. One of the drivers goes and dies on him in shady circumstances. Neal figures the cops are going to pin the death on him, so he ditches the body and takes the driver's identity.

On the way he picks up a girl, the aptly named Ann Savage. Big mistake. Turns out the savage Savage recognises the car and knows Neal isn't who he's pretending to be. She starts putting the screws on him. She's as hard as nails and knows there's some way money might be made out of this. Maybe they should sell the car when they get to L.A.

They try to do that. Then Savage discovers something.

She finds out that the driver's father is a rich man and he's on his deathbed. The driver left home in his teens so nobody knows what he looks like today. Neal could pretend to be him and collect - collect big. They'd both be set for life. Neal doesn't want to do that. She pleads with him. He utterly refuses. But Savage has a hold over him, she can spill the beans to the cops - there's no way Neal could convince anyone he didn't kill the driver. Not after he stole his car and identity. Nobody would ever believe him. Not the way Savage would tell it.

They go to their hotel room. They drink. The bicker and argue. Savage makes a pass at Neal. Neal shoots her down. She doesn't much like that. She locks herself in the bedroom to sulk. Neal tries to phone his girlfriend. Savage hears and threatens to call the cops. She snatches the phone and again locks herself in the bedroom. Neal tries to stop her by pulling on the cord.

He accidentally strangles her with the phone cord. Now he really is a murderer. He makes his getaway but knows the game's up. The movie closes with the cops picking him up. He makes no effort to try to escape. What's the use. He never gets a break.

A great little film. Would have been a lot better with a more polished and balanced script but the studio, the tiny PRC, didn't believe in wasting money on foolish things like that. Ulmer did a great job with what little resources he had. Savage is outstanding. The way her mood swings, the way she reacts, the way she spits out her sneering lines, the way she manipulates poor Neal. Savage in Detour is the quintessential film noir dame. What makes the performance so shattering is that it's so real, so believable, so true. This is a real woman. And all the more lethal for it.

Fallet Tulindberg

De senaste månaderna har komponisten jag mest aktivt hållit på med (bortsett från de självklara gubbarna Bach, Händel och Wagner) hetat Erik Tulindberg. Först för att jag tyckte att han var en charmant kuriositet, sedan för att jag snabbt insåg att han är lite sjuttons bra. Och ju mera jag lyssnar på hans verk desto mera begeistrad blir jag.

Namnet kan vara något obekant även för den som är bevandrad i musikens annaler. Erik Tulindberg (1761-1814) är Finlands första komponist. Så heter det och så är det. Hans produktion är liten men av synnerligen hög kvalitet. En del av kompositionerna har försvunnit men kvar har vi sex fräscha stråkkvartetter, en dynamisk violinkonsert och något litet för soloviolin. Åtminstone en violinkonsert är borta, det vet vi.

Det imponerande med Tulindberg är att han komponerade allt han komponerade när han var kring tjugo, lite på. Sex kvartetter, två violinkonserter, och ingen vet väl riktigt hur mycket har gått förlorat. (Det måste finnas ett och annat.) Och allt detta medan han studerade i Åbo (eller kanske man borde säga levde ett glatt studentliv i Åbo?). Han var en munter karl, ytterst god violinist, och tog ej sina studier med alltför mycket allvar. 1782 utexaminerades han och 1784, 23 år gammal, flyttade han till Uleåborg där han blev tjänsteman. Till slut blev han rent av landets finansminister. Stackars människa.

Inga kompositioner efter det. Inte en enda. Han spelade gärna violin, särskilt kvartetter, men det var inte möjligt att göra det alltför ofta i den dystra och avlägsna provinsen där det musikaliska livet var outvecklat. När upptäcktsresanden Giuseppe Acerbi reste till Lappland gjorde han sin resa via Uleåborg och besökte Tulindberg. Acerbi var en splendid violinist han också och herrarna musicerade nöjt tillsammans. Spelade de måhända Tulindbergs egna kvartetter? Det känner vi inte till. En satisfierande tanke dock.

1797 valdes Tulindberg in i Kungliga Musikaliska Akademin, men inte för sina kompositioner. Nej. Utan för att han hade samlat in folkmelodier.

Naturligtvis glömdes han bort. Helt och hållet. Hans produktion var ju trots allt liten och rykte mer eller mindre lokalt. Spelades han utomlands? Åtminstone Stockholm verkar sannolik, men på den tiden hörde man ju ihop.

Och bortglömd förblev han i generationer. Ända tills 20-talet. Det var nämligen först år 1925 som någon upptäckte sex stycken dammiga partiturer på universitetsbiblioteket. Stråkkvartetterna. Först trodde man att Tulindberg hade kopierat någon annans kvartetter. Det var en närmast omöjlig tanke att någon i Finland skulle ha kunnat komponera så intrikata och originella stycken så tidigt som på 1780-talet. Sedan studerade man partiturerna lite noggrannare och insåg att de faktiskt var Tulindbergs egna kompositioner - och landets tidigaste stråkkvartetter. Och styckena var så pass fina att de var fortfarande värda att spelas.

Men. Det fattades en stämma, andra violinen. Detta bevisade, ansågs det, att kompositionerna verkligen hade uppförts och en av musikanterna hade glömt bort att återlämna sina noter. Stämman återskapades. Först av John Rosas och Toivo Haapanen, sedan av Kalevi Aho och till sist av Anssi Mattila. Så nu existerar det tre lite olika versioner av Tulindbergs sex stråkkvartetter. Inte så dumt det heller.

Violinkonserten i sin tur hittades år 1956 i Kungliga Musikaliska Akademiens bibliotek. Så att kanske hade den uppförts i Stockholm?

Det gör nästan ont när man tänker på hur mycket Tulindberg kunde ha komponerat. Och hur fina styckena kunde ha - skulle ha - blivit. Symfonier, operor, konserter. Allt. Men nej. I stället för att bli Den Finländska Musikens Fader valde att bli tjänsteman istället.

Jag vet inte. Kanske hade han inget mer att säga som komponist. Men en riktig konstnär kan väl bara inte sluta sådär? Och leva i det filistinska mörkret och den småborgerliga kylan i över trettio år? Kanske komponerade han en stor mängd saker men rev sedan sönder dem för att de trots allt inte blev så bra som han ville?

Eller, kanske, kommer någon en dag att göra ett sällsamt fynd någonstans i Uleåborgs vildmarker?

Autobiographical Python

One thing in particular struck me while I was reading The Pythons Autobiography by The Pythons, very ably edited by Bob McCabe (who to my great surprise and considerable relief turned out not to be the same fellow at all as Graham McCann who wrote a pretty bleak and amazingly unfunny book about Fawlty Towers - something that quite honestly I thought would not be humanly possible): the Conflict.

However did these chaps agree on anything? Cleese seems aloof. He's really got better things to do. It's all a bit silly really. Not to say repetitive and somewhat boring. Chapman's drunk. Mostly. Or then he's off chasing boys. Terry Jones is obsessed with every slight detail and disagrees with anything Cleese says. Cleese is his bete noire. And he just won't give in. And if he does he'll recant tomorrow. Terry Gilliam wants to be heard and taken seriously. I mean, although he is an American, he's still a Python. Idle is the lone wolf. He's always the underdog. Cleese and Chapman write together, so do Jones and Palin. So in a vote they've got two votes automatically, by default. Who's Idle got? Sweet FA, that's who. Palin is just too nice and can't say no. He shrugs away from conflict. That's a problem.

Whenever anyone in the book says anything (the book is composed of quotes), another Python entirely disagrees. "This was terrible" is at once countered with "What a great success". "This was our aim" is countered with "That was never what we tried to do". To the outside eye it very much looks like these fellows never agree on anything. It is indeed a miracle that anything gets done. But it was. And we all know the absolute heights they scaled.

It all spells serious conflict. Now that's important. The internal conflict within the group. It seems to me that it's quite impossible to achieve anything worthwhile if everybody agrees. Conflict guarantees that everybody will do his best. There's no alternative. There's always a lethal competition going on. Second rate ideas just won't cut it. Sometimes even first rate ideas won't do - if someone's feeling bloody.

It works. The results are, notoriously, amazing. The conflicts just guarantee that no substandard material will end up in the series or in any movie. Then, after a while, nothing. The conflicts are too great. There's no cohesion any longer. Everybody's got other things to do. Chapman's dead. (And insists on staying dead.) Palin travels. Jones writes books, makes BBC thingies and directs. Gilliam is in Hollywood. Cleese is in business. Eric Idle is the only one who really wants Python. Who needs Python. The other ones would like to, sort of, but it's simply too difficult. So after The Meaning of Life it all falls apart - and even the Meaning suffers from a lack of polishing the script; it's not a movie at all but a collection of skits, and just because the Pythons couldn't be bothered with finishing the script. So they simply didn't. It's funny, contains some of the best Python sketches, but a movie it isn't.

So the thing that makes them great eventually pulls the group asunder. That's the nature of the beast. Control it or it will destroy you. And in the end it will destroy you no matter what.

Well, they had good innings. We're satisfied.

Science Fiction Treasure Trove

Right ho - this is a splendid one: StarShipSofa.com. Came across it on Facebook, so I guess Facebook isn't always and every time an utter and complete waste of everyone's time. (Or do I express myself too strongly? The verdict is still firmly out on that one.) What it is, is a weekly (!) magazine filled with absolute science fiction goodies. I mean really the best of the best, so to say. But it's not something to be read, it's something to be listened to: a podcast. A podcast magazine, in fact. Now there's a thought. And a good one to boot. It works!

I especially enjoy the publisher, Tony C. Smith, with his broad and boisterous Newcastle accent and his invincible good humour when he does his editorials. Good and intelligent stories are fun so why not let it show?

And the writers! Well there's pretty much everybody who's anybody. Neil Gaiman, Larry Niven, Harlan Ellison, Geoff Ryman, Neal Asher, Elizabeth Bear, Spider Robinson, Karen Joy Fowler. To name but a few. There's a quite heartrending contribution by the incomparable Michael Bishop, a story he wrote after his son was killed in the Virginia Tech massacre. And, on a more positive note, there's a story by talented compatriot Hannu Rajaniemi (kudos, young Sir!) called His Master's Voice. But it would be entirely pointless to catalogue all stories. They're legion and they're solid, so there. Don't just take my word for it, check them out for yourself.

But. Here's the thing. What really annoys me. I mean, honestly. Is there any defence? I mean any? Hardly. Don't think so. Couldn't possibly be. What I want to know is: why haven't I been told about this site earlier? How come, to use a very apt Americanism. Who's to blame? Me? (I'll let that slide just this once.) But, luckily, it don't matter none that I'm a johnny-come-lately, all the previous podcasts are accessible, so no harm done really. Easy to download and a pleasure to hear.

But. There are something like a hundred issues of StarShipSofa out there. So no time to loose. Gotta get cracking.

Reading Whisky

A few months ago I was walking from my hotel to the Bremen Old Town as a notice in a shop window caught my eye. Turned out it wasn't a shop at all, actually, but a pub. (It wasn't open, I'm sorry to say, so parched poor little I went on my merry way.) And the notice in the window was the meeting schedule of the local Whisky society. No surprises there. Lot of Whisky societies nowadays.

What was surprising and not a little exhilarating was the next meeting of said Bremen Whisky society. They seemed to have a different theme for every meeting. The upcoming theme was to be science fiction.

I mean, now there's a brilliant idea - combining whisky with science fiction.

Three authors were to be dealt with and paired with appropriate whiskies. The authors: Lem, Asimov and Bradbury. Which whiskies are they? Wasn't revealed and I've been pondering ever since. Asimov is pretty easy, he's something quite popular and bit underrated by the cognoscenti; yet solid and dependable. Glenfiddich? Or maybe Glenmorangie? Bradbury is more complex. Even quirky. An acquired taste. Sometimes sweet or possibly oversweet. What? Bowmore? The young one's are brilliant and challenging, while the older ones (and the pretty dreadful and wholly misnamed Enigma) are slightly (or at times not so slightly) overproduced, too sugary by far, not even a bit balanced and to be quite frank, not very interesting. And Lem? Now there's a conundrum if ever there was one. What's he? An Islay to be sure. Something perfectly cerebral, something you either love or hate, unequivocally. Laphroaig? Maybe Caol Ila? Probably Caol Ila, that quite impossibly seaweedy Islay that even seasoned whisky vets gag at until that glorious moment of epiphany when suddenly it all makes sense.

Other authors. Robert Silverberg - Macallan? I quite like that one. Philip K. Dick - Talisker? Maybe Cardhu? Jorge Luis Borges - Cragganmore? Do I hear Edradour? Ian Watson - Arran? Douglas Adams - Balvenie? Philip José Farmer - Glenfarclas? Or maybe merely a decent Springbank? Norman Spinrad - Ledaig?

Or one could go quite the other way, have something complementry to drink with each author. Asimov is an easy read so why not pair him off with a difficult whisky? Like Ardbeg. And Lem with Glenlivet or Highland Park? Oban is often refered to as a restrained whisky - so obviously the notoriously unrestrained Harlan Ellison would go well with it. Lagavulin is full and smooth and firm (to quote the late lamented Michael Jackson), therefore a perfect companion to, say, William Gibson?

I'm not even going to go into Irish whiskey. Like Connemara. Or Redbreast. Or Tyrconnell. Not now. More's the pity. Suffice it to say that it's a matter that will be neither neglected nor forgotten. Steps will be taken. Books will be read. Tumblers will be emptied. You have my word as a gentleman.

Well, anyway one likes it, a nice dram goes well with a good book. Come to think of it, a nice dram goes well with almost jolly well anything.

Audio science fiction and - noir

SFFaudio have once more posted some highly interesting links. For instance: Roddy McDowall reading H.P. Lovecraft. Somehow this combination gives me the creeps, it really does, in a good way. Don't quite know why. Maybe it's the softness and gentleness of his voice. So soft and gentle it can only be deception.

What more? There are stories by perennial favourites Philip K. Dick and Robert Silverberg, there's quite a bit of Edmond Hamilton (from whom I've only ever read one novel, I'm sorry to say, if memory serves), there's a whole new SF collection from LibriVox.

Another highly interesting novel is E.E. "Doc" Smith's Triplanetary of the Skylark saga. Haven't read Smith in donkey's years, might be a lot of fun today. Unless it's completely unbearable. No. I shan't be a pessimist. It will be heaps of fun. This is also by LibriVox.

The really fascinating thing (also from LibriVox) is the Conan Doyle novel The White Company (1891), one of his better historical novels about the gentylle & parfait knyght Sir Nigel and his trusted squire set during the Hundred Years War in the 14th century. The novel Sir Nigel (1906), though written later, is in fact a prequel. If you haven't read any Doyle above and beyond Holmes, Challenger, Brigadier Gerard and possibly the odd ghost story, this might well be the perfect place to start reading. Or, in this case, listening. Doyle's historical fiction doesn't come better than this. And, after all, what is Holmes if not a knight, always ready to wield the sword of justice for any damsel in distress who in desperation comes calling at 221B? (Which, of course, makes Watson both his companion and his squire - and also the minstrel who spreads the news of his marvellous exploits!) Reading about Sir Nigel gives one a fuller understanding of what Doyle really meant when he created Holmes.

Then there's some honest pulp and gritty noir for the taking, stories by such stout fellows like Jim Thompson and William F. Nolan. And many more.

Precious little audio dramas, I must add. As usual. It all seems to be readings and the odd interview. Well, still, can't have it all.

Exit Poe

Mönstret är uppenbart.

Det börjar när Edgar är spädbarn. Innan han fyller två år försvinner hans far. Ingen vet vart. Fadern David Poe bara lämnar familjen. Hans öde är okänt, även om man kanske kan gissa att den svårt alkoholiserade fadern avlider kort efter sin flykt.

Ett par månader efter David Poes försvinnande dör Edgars mor Eliza i tuberkulos. Edgar är föräldralös.

Hans äldre bror placeras hos fars föräldrar. Farfar är dock så gammal och hans ekonomiska postion så prekär att han inte tar Edgar. Kan inte, vill inte? Hans syster placeras hos en bekant familj. Men vem tar Edgar?

Till slut hittar en av moderns skådespelarkollegor (som heter Usher!) ett barnlöst par i Virginia, John och Frances Allan. Frances är sjuklig och kan ej få egna barn. De vill ta Edgar, som är ett bedårande barn, intelligent och förtjusande på alla sätt och vis. De klär honom i de finaste av kläder, ger honom allt han vill ha och mera. Men de adopterar honom aldrig officiellt. Detta kommer att ha konsekvenser.

Allan är en förmögen man, en av Virginias förmögnaste. Hans förhållande till Edgar är svårt. Å ena handen skämmer han bort pojken, å andra handen är han känslokall och allt Edgar gör är fel. Frances älskar pojken ohämmat. Men (som med modern Eliza) är hennes hälsa svag och hon orkar inte försvara Edgar mot Allans koleriska raseriutbrott.

Så dör Frances. Allan gifter sig genast med sin älskarinna. Med en annan älskarinna har han redan barn, nu blir det flera. Och Edgar? Hur passar han in i den nya familjen? Det gör han inte. Alls. Relationen försämras ytterligare. Allan tröttnar på Edgars ständiga krav - pengar pengar pengar. Allan gör honom arvlös. Vänder sin rygg. Edgar är igen föräldralös.

Edgar söker upp sin faster Maria Clemm. Hon är änka och så fattig att hon måste hyra ut rum. Hon blir hans hushållerska, hans försörjerska, hans mamma. Han kallar henne Muddy. Muddys unga dotter Virginia kallar han Sissy. Muddy och Sissy. Mor. Syster. De blir hans nya familj.

När en förmögnare kusin, Neilson Poe, vill ta Sissy hem till sig, försörja henne och uppfostra henne ståndsenligt, på det sätt som hon borde uppfostras, kollapsar Edgar fullständigt. Han dricker sig stupfull och blir avskedad från sin tidning. Han börjar bombardera Muddy och Sissy med brev. Innehållet i breven är alltid samma. De kan inte lämna honom. De får inte lämna honom. Om de lämnar honom tar han sitt liv. Till slut lyckas han övertyga dem och de avböjer Neilson Poes förslag.

Ett par månader senare ser Poe till att situationen aldrig kan förnyas. Han gifter sig med Sissy. Hon är blott tretton år gammal. Äktenskapet är med största sannolikhet könslöst. Nu har han sin familj, sin egen familj.

Men som med alla kvinnor i hans liv,modern, Frances Allan, är Sissys hälsa svag. Tuberkulos. Naturligtvis. 1847 är även hon död. Poe börjar åter dricka. Han gör ett par desperata försök att gifta om sig. Han har inga realistiska chanser.

1849 är hans situation närmast desperat. Han har inget arbete. Ingen litar på honom. Han dricker. Hans hälsa är miserabel. Han sätter allt på ett kort. Om han lyckas kamma ihop tillräckligt med pengar kan han realisera sin dröm: att grunda en egen litterär tidskrift. Pengar får han delvis genom att sälja prenumerationer, delvis genom att föreläsa.

Möjligtvis kan han ännu gifta om sig? Ändå?

Han tar tåget från New York till Richmond. Mitt i allt stiger han av i Pennsylvania och berusar sig så kraftigt att han arresteras. I fängelset hallucinerar han och ser paranoida syner. Nästa dag låter de honom gå och han tar första bästa tåg tillbaka till New York. När han sitter i vagnen hör han hur de som sitter bakom honom planerar att mörda honom och kasta ut hans döda lik. Han stiger av och återvänder till Pennsyvania. Han går hem till en vän och beter sig rastlöst. Han vill raka av sin mustasch så att hans fiender inte känner igen honom men hans hand skakar så mycket att vännen får göra det för honom. Vännen är rädd att Poe ska försöka ta sitt liv.

Poe är utan pengar, han har tappat bort sitt baggage, han har bara ena skon kvar. En annan vän är tvungen att låna honom så mycket att han kan köpa sig en tågbiljett till Richmond.

Sedan vänder det. I Richmond är han bland de sina. Han skaffar sig en fin vit sommarkostym istället för den gamla tunga svarta kostymen han hade på sig från New York. Han accepteras genast i societeten - han tillhör stadens aristokratiska elit. Det var ju trots allt i Richmond han bodde som paret Allans privilegierade kronprins. Han håller sitt föredrag (utan sina anteckningar - dem har han tappat bort) och gör en stor succé. Men främst av allt: han träffar åter sin gamla förlovade Elmira Shelton, nu änka. Med Elmira var han hemligt förlovad när han skrev in sig i universitetet som sjuttonåring. När han var tvungen att avbryta sina studier (för att Allan inte gav honom så mycket pengar att han skulle ha kunnat betala sin hyra och köpa mat) och hamnade i Allans onåd tvingade Elmiras far henne att gifta sig med en annan.

Men nu. Men nu! Poe friar. Elmira svarar nej. Han friar på nytt. Hon säger ja.

De ska bo tillsammans i Elmiras stora fina hus i Richmond. Elmira är en förmögen kvinna. Hon har råd att satsa en bra slant i hans nya tidskrift. Ett mirakel har skett. Han är räddad.

Men först, innan de gifter sig, måste han åka tillbaka till New York, sätta sina affärer i ordning. Hämta Muddy som naturligtvis ska bo hos dem i Richmond. Efter det är allt frid och fröjd. Han är räddad.

När han lämnar Richmond känner han sig svag och krank och kraftlös. Förkyld? Kanske. Elmira är orolig. Han tar båten till Baltimore. Efter det - försvinnet han spårlöst.

Tills han hittas sanslös på en gata i Baltimore nästan en vecka senare, i någon annans billiga smutsiga kläder. Han förs till sjukhuset. Hans tillstånd är allvarligt. Han hallucinerar. Sista kvällen och natten ropar han "Reynolds! Reynolds!" timme efter timme. Sedan ger han upp andan. Dödsorsaken är fortfarande ett mysterium. Samma sak med det var tillbringade sina sista dagar eller vad han gjorde. Ingen vet. Teorierna är otaliga.

Men en sak är säker. Det han sökte efter hela sitt liv var trygghet, säkerhet, familj. Mor och far. Bristen på dem var det som sist och slutligen fick honom sätta sina värsta mardrömmar (av vilka han inte hade någon brist) på papper, och till slut dödade honom.

The Great Flamarion

After Erich von Stroheim failed as a director in Hollywood, he could only get employment as an actor, and mostly in pretty crummy films. Why did he "fail"? He never really stood a chance. His movies cost too much to make and were too gritty and realistic and even cruel (maybe sadistic might at times be the best word?) for the ordinary viewer. His movies were often too long and just couldn't be shown at a single sitting: Greed was about ten hours long the way Stroheim wanted it shown - not particularly viable for the theatres or, come to think of it, for the audiences either. Though in all fairness one supposes it could have been shown in three or four parts? (Or maybe the very pig-headed Stroheim wouldn't have any of that?) His movies tended never to get finished - like Queen Kelly of which there seems to be a couple of radically different versions floating around. (Different enough, in fact, to be completely different movies!) There really was no way he could last as a director - it's indeed a miracle he was allowed to make any movies at all.

So, it was back to being an actor for Erich. That was after all how he started in the racket. As a silent movie heavy, a most dastardly villain, a haughty Teuton, a despicable Hun, a Prussian beast - the man you loved to hate. And how well he did it! Then he started making his own films. That was over by 1930. As an actor after that he got to do a few brilliant roles like those in Renoir's La Grande Illusion and Wilder's Sunset Boulevard. Not many of his other movies are what you might call great. However, his presence in a movie, any movie, does make it interesting and definitely worth seeing.

The Great Flamarion by Anthony Mann (1945) is in many ways seriously flawed. It's one of Mann's earliest efforts and in its way a nice little film noir. Stroheim is Flamarion, a cool and distant marksman, who displays his superb shooting skills in a stage show. He has two assistants, the married couple Connie and Al. Al (Dan Duryea, who usually plays the sniveling crook) has a drinking problem and Flamarion threatens to sack him. Connie talks him out of it. Al's drinking gets worse and becomes a risk - he's supposed to perform the routine like clockwork or otherwise he just might get shot. Connie gets an idea. She starts to woo the standoffish Flamarion. She says she's horribly in love with him and if he fires Al she must go with him. And she simply can't be apart from Flamarion. Little by little Flamarion gives in and soon he's head over heels.

Then Connie starts dropping heavy hints. Wouldn't it be horrible if Al made a mistake on stage and got shot? It would be all Al's fault, him being drunk and all, and no blame would be attached to Flamarion. Flamarion is aghast. Then he starts thinking. Yes, it would be an accident. Not his fault in the least. And with Al gone he would get Connie, Connie would be all his. So he waits and bides his time till the drunken Al makes a false move and then he shoots - and kills. Horrible accident! Now they can be together. Not so, says Connie, not yet my darling. What do you mean, says Flamarion. We can't get together at once, says Connie, that would look bad. Connie will go away with another show and in three months they will meet and then the future is theirs and nothing can stand in the way of their strong love.

Three months later Connie doesn't show up. She's quite gone. The address she's given him turns out not to exist at all. Flamarion suddenly grasps the ghastly truth - she's used him! She's betrayed him! She's destroyed his life! What else can he do but track her down? Which is what he does. He finds her on tour in Mexico - and the wife of another man. She claims she's tried to contact him, that she still loves him, how could she ever really love another? He puts down his gun. She snatches it up and tells him the truth. He attacks her, she manages to shoot him twice, but he strangles her all the same. Having killed her he dies - but only after he's told his sad sad story in a slightly heavy-handed flashback.

As early film noirs go this is a pretty fair effort. And it's always good to see Stroheim as the duped, used and tormented inhuman monster who's quite the most human character in the entire film.

After The Great Flamarion Stroheim did another dozen or so movies. There's Sunset Boulevard in 1950 but not many other good ones. There were plans, many plans, but they all fell through. He wrote a couple of novels in French and plotted what magnificent things he would do if somebody gave him enough money to direct. Nobody did.

I spy

Came across W. Somerset Maugham's Collected Short Stories, Volume Three. Cover looked promising, not familiar - but did I already own it in another edition? Well, better take no chances. Took it home and turns out I don't own Vol. 3 although I have most of the other vols. Jolly good. Then, upon further inspection of said book, turns out I in fact do own it, sort of. Because it's in essence the same book as the novel Ashenden, except for a bit in the end: a short story called Sanatorium. What Maugham did was what in Science Fiction is called a fix-up - he took a bunch of related short stories and turned them into a novel. As far as I can tell there seems to be no actual rewriting as such, but the pacing of the book is slightly different as the chapter breaks don't strictly follow the breaks between the different stories. (I probably knew all this already as something like fifteen years ago I published an article about the Ashenden novel/stories in The Finnish Whodunnit Society magazine Ruumiin kulttuuri but have managed to forget all about it.)

Ashenden (or Vol. 3, if you will) is quite clearly one of Maugham's most interesting books. It's about a writer called Ashenden who during World War I becomes a spy. Maugham knows whereof he writes as he himself was a spy during the war. Therefore the stories are - if not autobiographical - then at least based on personal experience. They're quite low key, shy away from any melodrama or cheap sensationalism (which is pretty obvious when one compares them to other stuff about spies written around the same time) and come off as almost naturalistic. In the first short story the fellow who approaches him to become a spy tells the true story of what happened to a colleague of his. Well, the colleague had in his possession certain crucial documents. He went out and had supper, met a beautiful lady, they came back to his digs, had some bubbly and next thing the chap knows it's the following morning and the documents are gone, phut, just like that, and so's the lady - now how's that for a story? Ashenden rolls his eyes and says: "We really can't write that story much longer."

Hitchcock made a movie based on the stories, Secret Agent (1936), with John Gielgud as the slightly unlikely Ashenden, the lovely Madeleine Carroll as his "wife" and the truly sinister Peter Lorre as his disturbing associate The General. Not a bad little picture, not much to do with Maugham's original writings, but nevertheless not a bad picture.

Odd thing, by the way, how many writers become involved with the cloak and dagger business. Maugham, Compton Mackenzie, John Le Carré, Ian Fleming, Graham Greene, Manning Coles (now actually Manning Coles is a pseudonym behind which there were two writers: Manning and Coles, of whom Coles worked for British Intelligence in both wars), Ted Allbeury, Tim Sebastian. These are just a few that spring to mind. And the traditions are long: even in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries we have names like Daniel Defoe, Aphra Behn (one of the, to my knowledge, very few female author-spies) and indeed Christopher Marlowe who very likely owed his untimely demise to his shady dealings with that dangerous and ruthless man Walsingham, the spymaster of Queen Elizabeth. There are claims that Edgar Allan Poe was actually a government spy. I seriously doubt it.

Are authors good spies? Why do they want to be spies? Is there some intricate but hidden connection between spying and writing? I think there very well may be just that. What does a writer do - all the time? He observes people. He observes facts. He spies on private conversations. He pries into the souls of others. Why did he say that? Why did she react like that? Who is this person? What's his secret? What makes him tick? What makes her do the things she does? What is she thinking? What will he do? The writer is life's ever alert little eavesdropper. Would probably peep through keyholes too.

That's what fiction is about. Observing facts. Putting them together. Building large constructions based on tiny shreds of truth. Tiny slivers of life. Extrapolating.

There's also another thing that may be similar. I sincerely believe that all writers want to be someone else. At least sometime. At least for a little while. And that's what you do when you write somebody: you become that person. And that person becomes you. So for a while you get to pretend to be someone else. The act of writing, the act of creating, is the act of becoming and of being.

And then lastly but not necessarily leastly there's the lying. The untruths. The fabrication of facts. The fabrication of reality itself. That always appeals tremendously to the creative mind of the writer. Fiction is lying. Or maybe I can put it like this: writing fiction is lying with a licence. More or less. Wouldn't it be simply splendid if one could stretch it a bit? Stretch it into real life? Just a little? Where's the harm? All writers are born liars. They've just been able to channel their lies in a constructive and profitable way. Well, the same goes for the spy.

I well understand that a spy needs other qualities as well. But an author naturally has several of the more important qualities that a spy needs. And I'm not claiming that being an author automatically makes anyone a decent spy. Or even half decent. What I am saying is that I quite understand why so many authors would want to be and choose to become one. I quite understand.