'L'Armee des Ombres'

        Following my review of Jean-Pierre Melville's film 'Le Cercle Rouge' it may come as no surprise to find out that I have begun working my way through his work.  Yesterday I watched 'L'Armée des Ombres' of 1969.  And what a profoundly moving cinematic experience it was, so much so that in the middle of the night I feel compelled to put down my thoughts in this short review.  It isn't hyperbole to say I don't think I've encountered a film of such artistic and emotional heft in quite a while and I'm not at all ashamed to add that at the end I was in tears.

     'L'Armée des Ombres', based on the Joseph Kessel's semi autobiographical novel of the same name, is the story of a Resistance cell operating in France during the German occupation of the country in WWII.  It is a grim and bitter business, at once heroic and ruthless.  One feels that Melville, who himself fought in the Resistance, poured so much of his own experience into this film; and it is that, along with Melville's great artistic and technical skills, that make this film so compelling.  Much credit is also due to the cinematographer Pierre Lhomme and composer Eric Demarsan for a score of such poignancy.
     I won't spoil the ending except to say that something occurs that is quite exceptional in film making.  I really cannot recommend this film highly enough.

L'Armee des Ombres

1969

Director                 Jean-Pierre Melville
Cinematogrpahy  Pierre Lhomme
Producer               Robert Dorffmann

St Mary the Virgin, Tenby

      A welcome return to Tenby. A glorious day full of sunshine, and serenity.  The ancient streets of the tightly-packed town centre had a sense of all pervading calm, rather like a cathedral close or an Oxbridge college.

     St Mary's church sits at the centre of the old town, on what is likely to be an ancient site.  It is mainly a Late Medieval structure - a rebuilding and enlarging of the original of which only the tower, tall and gaunt, really survives.  Its stands, unusually on the s side of the chancel. The equally gaunt spire, based on that in Bridgewater, Somerset, is Late Medieval.  St Mary's is a large church for Medieval Wales, built with mercantile wealth.  Rubble masonry w Bath Stone (?) details.  Apart from tower, Perpendicular Gothic throughout.  Nave and aisles and very long chancel with n chapel (St Nicholas/Aisle of the grace of the Holy Rood), and tower and large chapel to the s (St Thomas, tho' the Inventory of the Ancient Monuments of Wales (1911) calls it 'St Anne's chapel').  Porches to s & n of nave. N porch Victorian.  Large, cruciform w porch demolished in 1817.  Ruins of former College of Priests to w of church.

     The interior is vast, spacious and on Thursday afternoon  filled with the clear, slanting light of approaching winter. The overall effect in the nave is rather like a hall-church.  Nave has original wooden wagon roof, like a wooden barrel vault - aisles open wooden roofs, Victorian by the look of it.  The church was restored twice in the 19th century: 1862-66 & 1885. The s aisle is exceptionally large, nearly as wide as nave and n aisle combined.  Somerset type piers are short and widely spaced.  (n & s arcades are of different design; the s has foliage capitals, the n none.)
     The chancel has a tiny clearstory, somehow squeezed between wall and wagon roof.  The latter is quite the design with a series of large figures of angels along the base. High Altar raised high on steps; below is the crypt chapel of Jesus.  The n & s chancel chapels are trapezoid in shape, tapering to the east - Aisle of the Grace of the Holy Rood noticeably so. Both have wagon roofs which have been repainted. 

     All the wood work has been limed. The church rich in monuments and memorials. 

     Geraldus Cambrensis, Gerald of Wales, scholar and writer, was rector here in the early 13th century.

Own work: The Banqueting House, Studley Royal

      So, The Banqueting House at Studley Royal, in N Yorkshire, that remarkable water garden that also includes the ruined Fountains Abbey with its purlieus. I have been to the Abbey, as a teenager, but not the garden.  The Banqueting House is thought to be a design by Colen Campbell, built by the mason Thomas Buck between 1728 and 1732.  Rather Baroque, all things considered.  Mixed media, 56 x 36 cms on 300gsm watercolour paper.

'Le Cercle Rouge'

     Siddatha Gautama, the Buddha, drew a circle with a piece of red chalk and said: "When men, even unknowingly, are to meet one day, whatever may befall each, whatever the diverging paths, on the said day, they will inevitably come together in the red circle."

     For my birthday present this year the bf has gone and bought me the box set of the films of the French auteur Jean-Pierre Melville (1917-1973).  A name associated with the French New Wave and Neo-Noir.  His work is heavily indebted to the Hollywood gangster movies on the 30s & 40s.

     So the other night I watched, for the first time, what is probably Melville's best work, for which he also wrote the script, 'Le Cercle Rouge' of 1970, a thriller - 'un film policier' as Melville himself described it - set in a contemporaneous France; the action moving slowly through a wintery nation from Marseilles, to Burgundy, and then on to Paris.  In places there is snow on the ground.  The film starts as a double manhunt: Corey (Alain Delon) is being pursued by organised crime; Vogel (a feral-looking Gian Maria Volonté) by the police under the command of  Le Commissaire Mattai, played by Andre Bourvil (aka 'Bourvil') in his penultimate film role.  That parallelism of the hunters is, I think, important here. By chance, or the hand of fate, the lives of these two criminal fugitives cross and the film begins its metamorphosis into a 'heist movie'.  In Paris Corey and Vogel are joined by the former police officer Jansen (Yves Montand) an expert marksman.  There is a sense in which in which the three criminal protagonists un-self themselves: Corey on release discards the photos of his former lover, Vogel sheds his handcuffs and escapes the police in dramatic fashion; and in perhaps one of the most striking scenes in the whole film Jansen goes 'cold turkey' and finds new purpose.  As one critic has said they become 'new men', sort of floating untethered figures, without apparent ties of family or past.  Apart from a cursory glance at the menage of Corey and Vogel in Paris, the only domesticity we witness is that of Commisssaire Mattai, who has a small apartment on the entresol, or mezzanine, of a typically 19th century Parisian apartment block.  Otherwise there is nothing superfluous, little in the way of score and as I have noted little or no back-story; for instance we have no idea as to the reason for Corey's imprisonment or why Vogel was been taken to Paris by the police.  Both are unimportant in the economy of the narrative. The result is an unusually spare film; cinema in a particularly 'pure' form.

      'Le Cercle Rouge' is also a film of immaculate stylishness. One feels, for instance, that there is hardly a shot that hasn't been considered deeply, and carefully.  Over all, colours are muted; greys and blues predominate and red is rarely used and then its presence on the screen is parsimonious.  Paradoxically, this limited palette does not (always) produce drabness - there is a constant intensity of vision.  Perhaps in this controlled use of colour there is a nod towards the colour films of Alfred Hitchcock.  The interiors - those created for the film - are of a high level of sophistication. Dress is fastidious. Suit and tie, trench coat are the order here - the influence of Hollywood.  Perhaps they should be seen as a uniform or the equivalent to the suit of armour. Credit must be given here to the Production Designer Theobald Meurisse, Set Decorator Pierre Charon, and the cinematographer Henri Decaë. 

     The French writer (and friend of Melville) Philip Labro wrote with an enviable and great stylishness of the Melvillian aesthetic thus: "Melvillian is what is told in the night, in the blue of the night, between men of law and men of disorder, through looks and gestures, betrayals and friendships given without words, in an icy luxury that does not exclude tenderness, or in a grayish anonymity which does not reject poetry."

     One way of understanding the narrative structure film is as a game of chess between the gang and the authorities - it may be purely coincidental but as Delon leaves a billiard hall in Marseilles, where, incidentally, he has given a couple of goons a good going over, he passes a sign that reads "Cercle Phoceen d'Echecs".  What are to make of this? Is this the only time that the word 'Cercle' appears in the film?

    Melville fought with the Resistance during WWII, adopting 'Melville' as his nom de guerre in honour of Hermann Melville.  He said of that time: "The best years of my life were the war years. When courage was a virtue.  I'm ashamed of it, but I liked the war. The rare moment in a man's life when one encounters virtue.  It's the career officers who do not hesitate, sometimes, to confront unlawfulness in order to save their honour." I believe he felt the lack of purpose in those Post War years - the 'Trentes Glorieuses'.  (Is there anything in the fact that this film appears to end of that period?) And there is too an echo of that purposelessness in the character of Jansen, the lost former police man, heavily dependent on drugs/alcohol. There is a sense in which Melville's films are not only a way of dealing with those war time experiences; but partly, one supposes, of re-living those years if only in a vicarious manner.

     This film is about masculinity and is concerned almost entirely with the realm of men.  (No woman speaks, or even holds the screen for very long.)  Melville is clearly fascinated about the 'hero' - the trope, or even archetype, of the solitary man without past or even, perhaps, future who acts in a manner beyond the ordinary. Oddly, perhaps, he makes Corey, the career criminal, the repository of the heroic. Ultimately, this film, a lament of sorts, is not only about the death of the hero but the end of the heroic as a phenomenon destroyed by the mundane little police man with the pet cats.

*  It was watching Bourvil in 'La Grande Vadrouille' (1966) playing opposite Louis de Funez and Terry Thomas that inspired this discovery of Melville.

**  "Est Melvillien ce qui se conte dans la nuit, dans le bleu de la nuit, entre hommes de loi et hommes de désordre, à coups de regards et de gestes, de trahisons et d'amitiés données sans paroles, dans un luxe glacé qui n'exclut pas la tendresse, ou dans un anonymat grisâtre qui ne rejette pas la poésie."

Le Cercle Rouge

1970

Director                 Jean-Pierre Melville
Cinematogrpahy  Henri Decaë
Producer               Robert Dorffmann

St Martin in the Bullring I

    In the morning before the concert we had a wander around the city centre - we headed sw from the hotel to St Martin's church in the Bullring, and in doing so we left the new glitzy city of Selfridges and Harvey Nichols and entered another, older city, the other Birmingham. 

     St Martin's is the mother church of the city.  It stands just above the valley floor of the River Rea.  Yes, Birmingham has a river.  Actually one of several of the blink-and-you-miss-it variety.  The spire, for all its blunt hard-faced competition, remains a city landmark.

    From most angles the church appears, apart from the tower and spire, low and squat - rather bunker-like from some directions.  What the visitor sees today is a nineteenth century rebuild of the original.  The only original structure left is the inside of the tower.  The rebuilt church is largely the work of the architect J A Chatwin (1830-1907) whose work we have encountered before on this blog.  (He was, you may remember, the great grandfather of the novelist & travel writer Bruce Chatwin.) Hammered dressed masonry, and rich Dec period detailing in a rather Lincolnshire manner.* All rather solid and prosperous looking.  No expense spared.  Slightly contrasting use of Derbyshire and Grinshill stone - the latter from Shrewsbury. Both sandstone, with one used for the walls and the other for the details, my guess is that they chosen in preference over the local, and friable, New Red Sandstone, for their resilience in the smoky atmosphere of the 19th city.  Chatwin seemingly had a lot of fun with gargoyles etc.  I don't know who designed the ironwork on the great w door but it is splendid.  All pomegranates and foliage in the Arts and Crafts tradition.  The church was damaged in the war and restored in the mid-fifties.

     Sadly the church was locked.  I have been in some years ago and all I can recall is that the interior was a lot less solid than the exterior would lead you to believe.  On the s side are a series of service buildings - church hall, vestries etc - built over the churchyard;** to the e the earlier stuff in a rather Arts and Crafts manner by the next generation of Chatwin architects, Philip and Anthony Chatwin (1873-1964); and to the w Modernist (prob 1970/80s, but actually 2002-3 by the firm APEC) - a sort of reinterpretation of Ye Olde England.  The latter looked as though it were in need some attention if only from a window cleaner.  The whole area is somewhat shabby with people sleeping rough around the church.  At times I felt I was intruding.

     Beyond the church is the market.  It was like stepping back into the 1970s.  In all a long way from Selfridges.

*    Chatwin's rebuilding took its stylistic cues from P C Hardwick's restoration of the tower in the early 1850s, when  original Dec details had been found during the course of the work. The use of hammer dressed masonry, however, was Hardwick's own contribution.

**  There is a tiny strip of churchyard to the north of the church.  And although it is a small remnant of the what was once there it is a welcome sight there being so little greenery in that part of the city.

Sibelius in Birmingham

  For an instant God opens His door and His orchestra plays the Fifth Symphony

    A return visit to Birmingham mid-week, a chance to see family and, of a birthday treat a return to the Symphony Hall and the CBSO.  The matinée concert consisted of three works: 'Threnody (in memory of Jean Sibelius)' by Grant William Still, Piano Concerto no2 by Prokofiev and, after the interval, Sibelius's mighty 5th Symphony. A cracking afternoon it was, with the CBSO in fine form under conductor Jonathon Heyward.  The soloist in Prokofiev's fiery 2nd piano concerto was the Korean Yeol Eum Son.  It was a dazzling performance of what, to me, sounded a virtuoso piece.  A work that swings, violently at times, between Romanticism and Modernity.  It was all very Russian; the influence of Mussorgsky evident, the Rachmaninov less so.  (Though apparently it is there.)

     And then the Sibelius.  This I have to say is one of my favourite pieces of music.  One that holds a special place in my imaginative and emotional life, as I suspect it does for many people.  For Sibelius himself the composition took on a mystical aspect, as the quote at the beginning of this post demonstrates; as he wrote in his diary (21.05.1915) 'Today at ten to eleven I saw 16 swans.  One of my greatest experiences!  God, how beautiful....nature mysticism and the pain of life!  The finale of the fifth symphony.....ligature in the trumpets!!  This had to happen to me, who has been an outsider for too long.  So I've been in a holy place today.'  He is writing here of the great 'swan theme' or 'swan hymn' of the final movement, the moment the whole symphony has been building to, the moment of integration. 

     This was the first time I have the symphony heard it live, and I was not in anyway disappointed.  A bright, sparky performance, I can't pick out any moments in particular as the whole thing was so immersive, rather like floating down a rapidly moving river, however I do remember how the finale was noticeably brighter and tighter than some recordings which tend to emphasize the 'pain of life' aspect.  This finale, in this performance, was radiant, triumphant with 'nature mysticism'.  

     I think I will end this review with another quotation from Sibelius: 'Music is, for me, like a beautiful mosaic which God has put together. He takes all the pieces in his hand, throws them into the world, and we have to recreate the picture from the pieces.'

Habitat Catalogue 1988

      I had bought this, the 1988 edition of the Habitat catalogue, because I was looking for the Arts and Crafts fabric range that Habitat produced in that year in collaboration with the V&A.  The aptly named V&A Collection.  I'm really intrigued by this collection (which also I have discovered, as of 7.10.24, also included ceramics) as it revived designs by Arts and Crafts masters such as Voysey.  Images of these designs are available on the V&A website but information there and elsewhere is quite scarce.  There are any number of Habitat fabrics dating from 1988 on the museum website which therefore, I presume, formed part of the collaboration but only about half a dozen are obviously 'Arts and Crafts'.  If sales of second hand curtains on eBay are anything to go by, the designs 'Madura Tree' and 'Madura Leaf' were the most popular patterns.  The two Voysey fabrics, 'The House that Jack built' and 'Alice' both designed for children, included in the collection are almost as popular, but other designs such as 'Hemlock' are yet to appear.  Maybe the name was off putting.

     The first sentence I typed here when thinking about writing this post was: 'It is as though something has crawled into a corner and quietly died', and there is no ignoring the fact that looking through this catalogue in the days after it arrived was a disappointing experience.  Not only were the hoped for Arts and Crafts fabrics not featured, but something quite vital had indeed died.  Images too small, the submergence of everything in a gloop of sleekness.  Everything is bland and just a little corporate - I'm not sure whether this just a reflection of the wider culture, or of the internal machinations of the company. Then there is the absence of texture. Gone too are those little articles that, perhaps, set the Habitat catalogue apart from its competitors.  There is an almost unnerving sense of claustrophobia - the 1988 catalogue is a very introverted product caught up in its own 'materiality'; the room sets more enclosed, arid; there are less items on view that are unavailable to but at Habitat.  The items that suggested the life of owner of the room.  In addition all the photographs are far too small, and to be honest, I found it difficult to find suitable content to photograph for this blog.  Looking back at the distance of a fortnight, however, most telling thing, and not a first glance that noticeable, is the absence of the introductory letter from Terence Conran himself.  
     Since then I have somewhat modified my attitude.  The older Habitat is still there.  There are some good design to be found - lovely glass wear, cutlery and kitchenware.  There is a whole plethora of good fabrics designed by Collier Campbell, some of which may have been designed back in the 1970s.  Yet because of the design of the catalogue all these good things have to be actively searched for.

     (All the patterned fabric below is, I believe, by Collier Campbell.)

     

St Michael, Clyro

      Of all noxious animals, too, the worst is a tourist.  And of all tourists the most vulgar, ill-bred, offensive and loathsome is the British tourist.

     To Hay-on-Wye on Thursday (only four books bought).  Thursday chosen because it was market day - always the best day for visiting a country market town.  On the way back home we made a small detour to Clyro, just over the Wye from Hay and at the very south east tip of old Radnorshire.  My interest was sparked a couple of years ago by watching, on YouTube, a documentary made for the BBC by Sir John Betjeman on the 19th century clergyman and diarist Francis Kilvert.  'Vicar of the Parish' was made in 1975/6 (broadcast Thursday 29th July '76), directed by Patrick Garland and produced, for BBC Wales, by Derek Trimby.  It has a wonderful melancholic air and good use is made of the 'Sea Slumber Song' from Elgar's 'Sea Pictures'.  There is, sadly, evidence of Betjeman's increasing Parkinson's Disease; he spends most of the time in front of the camera sitting down.

     Francis Kilvert, born 1840 in Wiltshire, came to Clyro in 1865 as curate.  He stayed until 1871, when he returned to Wiltshire before returning to the Marches in 1876 to the living of St Hamon in Radnorshire. From 1877 until his death two years later he was vicar of Bredwardine over the border in Herefordshire. His diaries, started in 1870 and continued until his death, open a window onto rural provincial life in the 1870s.

     And so to the church.  It stands in the midst of a large graveyard.  All that remains of the Medieval structure is the study w tower - belfry stage added 1897.  The rest of the church was rebuilt in the 1850s by the Hereford architect Thomas Nicholson (1823-1895).  Chancel and nave with north aisle.  Decorated detailing. Local rubble stone with bath stone (?) dressings.  Betjeman sometimes wondered if Victorian churches would ever 'soften'; judging by St Michaels perhaps not.  The interior, with the exception of the chancel is light-filled and not at all bad, though on the dull side.  There are few furnishings of note.  Lavish funerary monuments in graveyard.

Habitat Catalogue 1981/2

     So here I am with yet another vintage Habitat catalogue.  This time from 1981.  A rather jaunty cover, mainly blue and yellow, busier than before with just a smidge of vulgarity.  The aesthetic has changed - more sharper and hard-edged, less homely.  That change detected in the 1978 edition continues to grow. The catalogue interior, however, tells a slightly different story, in that it is more evenly balanced between the new hard style and the old humanism.  In fact some of the images, say of the 'Arbour' bedroom range, look like they've been used in earlier editions, however the presence of a new wallpaper range 'Kandi' on the wall shows that the image was taken specifically for the 1981/2 edition. Habitat as evolutionary, and perhaps even conservative.  As for the eclecticism of earlier catalogues, apart from the lighting, Art Deco Revival has disappeared, as have the Liberty prints, but the Laura Ashley inspired 'ditzy' print 'Tangleweed' remains.  Brown is on the way out and there is an increase of bright primary colours and pastels, with mixed results.  
     One of the delights of the Habitat catalogue are the little extras in the way of articles.  This edition has four written by members of the Conran stable such as Stephen Bayley* (Bauhaus furniture), and Antonio Carluccio (Italian cooking).  I guess, in a way, it makes Conran seem like Henri Gautier Villars.

     Several of the new style home sets, it has to be said, are really quite awful. The worst is the room created by Stafford Cliff; perhaps not bad, but hardly domestic.  More suitable for a commercial space. Born in Australia, Cliff, I should remind you at this point, had been the Art Director of the Habitat Catalogue for 10 years from 1971; this then could be either his final catalogue, or the first without him.  I know that this is tantamount to heresy, but I'm that not that impressed with the room set designed by Terence Conran either.  It just seems a bit tired.  The work of a man with a busy schedule and little time to spare. But then, I suppose, Habitat seems to have quite the history of bad design**, in the same way it was quite good at simulacra.  Anyway the good....

The bad....

 And the strange....

*  Described once as Robin to Conran's Batman

** For example, pattern design, which, on what ever surface, was always a bit of a weakness.