Beyond the Roundels

I found this sitting in my posts in progress from March, about what I'd been watching at the time, or some of it. I obtained the two small pieces of info it was lacking and have otherwise posted as-is, so it's probably fairly babbly, but I feel it is better to post than not to post. (At least with random mostly-complete media posts, that is.)

The Ghost Camera (1933) This was recced to me ages ago by sovay and I managed to snag it in passing on TalkingPictures TV, but then failed to watch it. (I have issues with watching all sorts of things still for reasons that are too stupid and annoying to go into, but they are all basically the Chronic Fatigue Syndrome being a pain.) But then, liadt sent me it on DVD as well! So having been recced it twice by two people who know what's what when it comes to elderly film and suchlike, I had to eventually consider putting it in the dvd player and watching it.

Anyway, as I mentioned before, I really enjoyed it! It was sweet and fun. The internet tells me it was an unexpectedly good 'Quota Quickie' and it is. A nerdy scientist accidentally acquires a camera with a dangerous set of photos inside it, develops them and sets out, while being dogged by the criminals who want it, to find out whose camera it is - starting with finding the woman in one of the photos. It's engaging, the hero is charmingly atypical and shy, and it really does do some cool things with experimental camera angles and techniques, some of which almost even come across like handheld camera in places.

It's very early UK film, so it doesn't have the polish that a lot of the US ones had acquired by even this point, but if you like old films, this is a fun and interesting one.


Dope Girls (BBC) s1 I've only watched half of this because it was too much for me, but I neverthless watched that much, because it looked fascinating and different and the sort of thing I would be all over if it wasn't so much about crime. I'm hopeless when people in fictonal things are routinely committing crimes, and this is very violent, lots of 'rave' type shooting of scenes, none of which I can cope with. Saying I watched it, given how much I used the skip 10s button is probably an exaggeration BUT it's really beautifully made and it's about women immediately post WWI, based on a true story of a woman who set up a Soho nightclub (given value of 'true' no doubt varies in the show). The series also follows her illegitimate mixed race daughter Billie, a dancer, her legitimate teenage daughter who's getting into spiritualism following her father's death, and Violet, one of the very first women in the police, who's sent undercover into the nightclub.

Warnings for pretty much everything ever: dodgy accents, murder, suicide, meat & butchery, drugs, sex, 'rave' type scenes, beatings etc. It seems to be trying to be the new Peaky Blinders but since PB happened while I was ill and also contains characters who routinely commit crimes, I can't comment on accuracy of media's "the new x" pronouncements.

In short, it looks great if only I weren't me. I might still finish it, unwisely, anyway. It's about women immediately post WWI! /o\


They Came To A City (1944) This is one I happened to catch on TalkingPictures TV just as sovay was talking about John Clements, and I realised I had accidentally snagged this, featuring him. It's adapted from a play by J. B. Priestley, who actually turns up in a little prologue with a wee Ralph Michael & Brenda Bruce to tell the story of the film as a fable to prove a point to them. The story within a story is of nine ordinary British people from different walks of life who find themselves transported to a mysterious city run by an apparently perfect sort of socialist ideal. Some of them hate it, some of them stay, and some of them return to their regular lives to try and make their own cities more like the City. It's very static and talky and we don't see the city, but they pretty much lifted the original play's cast into the film and the performances are great all round and always raise it when it gets too close to being too much just talking about the ideas. It's slow but I found it utterly fascinating and loved it. I had to leave it on the DVR, so I couldn't even delete it as watched!

Also it gave me all the feels about the Beveridge Report and I've never said that about a piece of fiction before.


The Ghost Train (1941) wiki tells me there are actually about nine different versions of this, originally a play by Arnold Ridley who I know as Godfrey in Dad's Army. This is the most comic version, I gather, but also the one that has villainous Nazis instead of unlikely Cornish communists. It was another one I snagged recently from TPTV and, encouraged by current watching ability, I gave it a try and enjoyed it very much indeed! It does occasionally veer towards becoming a vehicle for Arthur Askey but it recovers itself in time, although I would definitely be interested in seeing some of the other versions. But his role as comedian was written in very well (he's a seaside vaudeville performer, his antics cause the stranding & solve it, and everyone gets annoyed with him) and I liked everyone else very much. Another mixed group of strangers get stranded in a remote Cornish railway station - with a story about a ghost train that runs through the station.

Anyway, I had a lot of fun, and I'd definitely be curious to see a version played more straight, but like I said, this is the one that sends a bunch of Nazis off a railway bridge, so I don't feel that it was the worst place to start!


[May comment: still didn't go back to Dope Girls; the state of my brain when employing the iPlayer can be easily illustrated by explaining that what I did was to watch a series and a half of Malory Towers instead. XD]

I started this on 27th Feb 2021 for 100fandomicons and have finally completed it, after taking longer than anybody else ever has, which I suppose is one claim to fame. (You can see the fandoms if you hover over the icons.)

( 100fandoms table under here )

More things, updating from the last report of things!

1. yuletide assignments have gone out! I have an excellent one, but obv no more can be said. Good luck to everyone else also starting the writing in secret portion of the Yuletide experience.


2. (a) Re. my resolution to Watch More Rattigan, which is progressing, or at least half progressing. I realised after making my last post about it, that such an animal as the BBC Rattigan Collection existed on DVD and was currently going too cheap not to snag, so I used lingering b'day/Christmas money.

Now it has arrived and it is mine, all mine! I have my mitts on not only ones I haven't seen but also the lovely 1976 BBC French Without Tears that YT provided the other week, and the Ian Holm and Judi Dench Browning Version that I haven't seen more than brief clips of since about 1993. \o/


(b) However, in the meantime, I looked at my Royal Exchange Theatre book to see if James Maxwell had directed or performed in a Rattigan play, and resolved that, if so, I would start with that one. It turned out that he did, directing While The Sun Shines (1943), a wartime comedy. I had a feeling this wasn't included in the BBC set, and I was right, so what I am doing currently is listening to a BBC 1969 Radio production via RadioEchoes of While the Sun Shines (also on YT). (Even the absence of the Internet Archive could not hinder my Rattiganisation.)

I think of the Rattigan productions I've experienced so far this is my least favourite, but given how stellar those have been, that is not really much criticism. I'm enjoying it, but I haven't got to the end, so I won't make any final judgments on the play itself yet, although it is more like French Without Tears than the later two. I am curious to know how it will wrap up, and it's not hard to see some of the aspects that might have interested James Maxwell as a director.

So far, though, Rattigan keeps making the hero sleep with other servicemen, for Reasons, and also the French Lt, talking about talking to people on trains, said that usually, When in Rome... so on English trains "I act as if I had died in my seat" which. Amazing. Accurate to this date. (Exceptions only in events on things going terribly wrong on the train, which was what happened to him.)


(c) YouTube noticed my interest, and threw me this little Part One of introduction to Rattigan by the National Theatre, which helpfully covered exactly the three plays I had seen. It's very short, but I really thought the director (directors?) talking about The Browning Version at the end (and calling it a perfect play ♥) absolutely got it. (And incidentally the photos they showed along with it suggested that the NT have done a version that had Anna Chancellor as Millie! With what looked like Nicholas Farrell, to me. Which made me go !!!!)


(d) And then also Talking Pictures turned out to be showing the film of Cause Celebre with Helen Mirren last night, which is another play not included on the BBC Boxset, so I recorded it. I feel like the world at large has just gone: at last! And is queuing up to shove three decades of long overdue Rattigan at me.

I will go slowly though and just watch one every so often as a treat. (WHICH PLAY NEXT THO???! XD)


(e) re. French Without Tears and my (now lapsed again) BNA subscription, I realised I'd claimed the 1987 one I had snagged a review of was directed by Sue Wilson, but actually I misremembered: she directed the next play Jeremy Northam did at Salisbury that year, and this one was by Lynn Wyfe. But The Stage did pause to vindicate my feeling that a v young JN would have been an ideal Kit Neilan, as the review singled him out for first praise: "Jeremy Northam produced all sorts of little tricks to make his portrayal of Kit Neilan touchingly appealing..." (although everyone else was good, too, they said.) Ha.


3. Talking my BNA sub, and finally escaping Rattigan's clutches for a moment, I did a quick search for my granddad's cousins, George & Bill Partleton, who were make-up artists on films, and retrieved this very random pic that should also please liadt, so I had to share it:

( Under here for pictorial evidence )

[I started this post in July 2018. I feel perhaps I should finish it before I have no memory of anything I watched any more. I already couldn't remember the things I watched in June when I wrote it, so expect even less sensible comments than usual.]


... or some of it, anyway. I have been recording films off the TV a lot lately, especially since I discovered Talking Pictures, which is a good enabler is you're into old British films (and TV). Some modern things may get in, too. I do watch them. I just don't always talk about them.

( Films under the cut before I forget them all )

Now I've finally finished my Thriller (Part 1) review/picspam post, I am behind again. Let me talk about what I have been watching over the last couple of months (or more), other than the first 5 discs of Thriler.

1. I finished Secret Army. I did mostly enjoy it, although I got impatient with it again at the end. Terence Hardiman as Reinhardt (who doesn't give a damn about anything since they've lost the war and most of his friends have just been executed in the wake of the assassination attempt on Hitler) did liven things up, though. He was great, and not even actually evil, either. (Particularly his exit when ( Spoiler ) Kessler is rightly both awful and complex, of course, and Clifford Rose was very good in the role.) Bernard Hepton spent most of the last series in prison, on film, but he did eventually escape and return to the studio, and I gave it a lot of plus points for what eventually happened with Monique, too. Anyway, I watched it! I now know where 'Allo 'Allo is coming from.


2. I skipped ahead briefly to watch Suzanne Neve's second Thriller, and while I'll cover it in its turn, I can report that she is better at terrorising innocent Americans than James Maxwell: she sticks them in her underground pottery kiln and bakes them, no angsting required. 1970s Suzanne Neve is so far a lot more evil than 1960s Suzanne Neve. (I would side-eye the ending of the 1968 Dracula here, but personally, I blame Ed Bishop for throwing her down the stairs in UFO.)


3. I finally got to the E-Space trilogy (DW), watching Full Circle and State of Decay (before an appropriate break for the BBC 1977 Dracula). Full Circle has a good SF idea at the heart, but nothing else much with which to pad it out. Except Adric, but, er, well...

I enjoyed State of Decay a lot, though, especially in comparison to Full Circle (it's good to see that future spaceships will go on with BBC Acorn computers on board!). Plus, the whole Time Lords and Vampires mythology backstory is potentially fun to play with and Romana gets two great costumes, while Adric spends at least an episode unconscious, and it has a great look, particularly for that era, especially the location scenes. What more could I ask for? (I'm sorry: Adric wasn't bad in this one! I'm mean, I know.)


4. And so, then, what more appropriate than that I pause to watch the TV show that caused State of Decay to be postponed for 3 years and gave us Horror of Fang Rock instead? (Accidentally; my viewing is not really that well planed!)

I'm not really sure why the BBC were so nervy about this version of Dracula that they thought DW doing vampires at the same time might make them look silly, but apparently they were. They had no need: this is lovely. It's unlike most of the old TV I've been watching - it was 1977 doing glossy event TV with a 2 1/2 hr feature-length version of the novel that's probably the most faithful adaptation still. (Although there are some changes, of course.) It was very good! I recommend it even if you're not usually into old TV, but are into Dracula. (I believe it is up on YouTube, and I got the DVD pretty cheap anyway.)

( Cut for further Dracula rambling )


6. I then decided that I should stop being wimpish and watch the rest of Mystery and Imagination. I'd already seen "Dracula", the Ian Holm "Frankenstein" and "The Suicide Club" (the one with David Collings and the cream tarts and the invisible hyenas and Major Geraldyne, because obv. that is the one that David Collings would be in). The Freddie Jones "Sweeney Todd" was out because I Do Not Do Sweeney Todd, which left me with "Uncle Silas" and "The Curse of the Mummy" out of the Thames adaptations, so I watched "The Curse of the Mummy." ( More about 1960s TV Victorian horror ) After that, I thought I'd had more than enough horror for a bit and left "Uncle Silas "unwatched and returned to Doctor Who and E-Space.


7. Warrior's Gate was very weird and also had Clifford Rose being excellent again. It was definitely the good weird, though, in that way only Classic Who is every once in a while. I mean, it looks like the stranger kind of 80s pop video (one that would definitely get nominated for Yuletide), so it wouldn't be for everyone, but still: the good weird/meta, I think, with bonus believably mundane, petty villains and random lion people. (It must be Doctor Who. <3)


8. I recorded Mrs Miniver off the telly, and the main thing I have taken from this is that Julian Fellowes stole the flower show plot for Downton Abbey. And given that I already know that he stole two plotlines/backstories and a minor incident from Duchess of Duke Street (as well as acting in it), I am now wondering with some interest and amusement, where exactly he swiped everything else from. (Anything from Upstairs Downstairs, maybe?) It's kind of engagingly blatant swiping, though. And gives us May Whitty vs Maggie Smith! Oh my. (I did like it, but it was made mid-WWII and so is very patriotic etc. But well done! There were some really good scenes, and Dame May Whitty as well as Greer Garson, and it was very watchable still.)


9. I also recorded the next old series Drama was offering as well, which is When the Boat Comes In. It stars Jack and Esther from New Tricks (James Bolam and Susan Jameson, who are married in rl, and going out in this). It is early 20th C Tyneside and the first episode was grim about shellshocked returning soldiers, the second had a poor orphan shipped off to Australia alone, and then the continuity announcer went, "And next, things get even harder..." It is, as they say, grim oop north. It seems good so far, though. And maybe one day the boat will come in; there are at least 40 eps on my DVR already and they may not all be equally depressing...


* I don't know if this is really a downside, though. It is very funny.

(I'm still not doing anything for fandom_stocking. Luckily it should open soon and then I can relax and do something else! I forget, of course, that 'better' when you've been bad is a relative term.

Also I seem to have given the impression to everyone that Manhunt is rubbish and it really isn't; it was just a bit up and down and sexist to begin with & I get very little out of protracted 'action' sequences. It's now reached an impressively consistent high standard. Vincent, Nina, and Jimmy, though, remain the most rubbish. Strangely, everyone was a lot more interested in watching it despite this, much more so than anybody is when I tell them old TV is good. Reverse psychology??)

Anyway, look at me, this makes it twice in a year (not calendar year) at least this time. I probably won't read enough to make it every Wednesday, but hopefully more often. I am optimistic!

What I've Just Finished Reading

And So To Murder by Carter Dickson, which I finished up quite quickly after I posted the other day. It was good fun and I enjoyed it. I still don't know whether to praise the BBC for giving me lovely mental casting (the three characters who were the most fun were played by Suzanne Neve, William Russell, and Stephanie Bidmead) or curse them for burninating it, but it did add to the book, so I suppose I'd better at least be a tiny bit grateful.

As I said, Monica Stanton (aka Suzanne Neve) is a vicar's daughter who writes a steamy Romance novel in 1939; her aunt, distressed, wonders why she couldn't write a nice detective novel, like those by Bill Cartwright (Wm Russell):

Now Monica Stanton, to begin with, had no real grievance against that inoffensive form of entertainment known as the detective-story. She neither liked nor disliked it. She had read a few, which struck her as being rather far-fetched and slightly silly, although doubtless tolerable enough if you liked that sort of thing. But, by the time her aunt had finished, Monica was in such a state that she had come to curse the day Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was born. It was a wordless, mindless passion of hatred. As for Mr William Cartwright... Monica felt that she would like to poison Mr Cartwright with curare, and dance on his grave.

( Read more... )

Before Christmas, I can now say that I was for obvious reasons, re-reading a lot of Miss Marple as well as reading Dracula for the first time (my reactions are in my Yuletide reveals post).

I also finished Venetia by Georgette Heyer, a re-read, although it was one of the books I rashly gave away a while ago, so it had been a long time. Very enjoyable, of course, and I am very happy to have a copy again. It is very sad that after a year of reading Regency Romances, I still haven't found anyone even a tiny bit like Georgette Heyer. I wish there would be, somewhere, in some period or other.


What I'm Reading Now

I'm a bit between things, but I continue with the very excellent The Victorian City by Judith Flanders in NF. (I am even taking notes for family history, which is a very exciting development as of the last few weeks and months. It's taken a bit of patient building up, but I'm able to do it a little again.)


What I'm Reading Next

That is the question. I was looking at my TBR (when spoons) pile and seeing whether any of them clicked easily, but I haven't decided which one to try next or whether just to re-read something to build up a little more stress-free stamina first before I risk reading a new-to-me book that might get killed by CFS. (I'd rather wait and be fair in my first reading). We shall see!