Monday 4 May 2009

Belle Epoque and They Who Dare, politics

I have previously written about the formation of special forces created by David Stirling DSO OBE was part of the infamous Clermont Set. The Daily Mail War Movie Collection film They who Dare features the early raid of the SAS on the Island of Rhodes where I have spent a short holiday and visited where the films the Guns of Navarone and Force Ten Navarone, based on the Alistair MacLean book, were set and filmed.

The film was made in the 1950‘s and the portrayal the Greek people is typical of the approach to all Western Europeans at that time. Eight specially trained men led by Dirk Bogard, with two guides who had left the island before it fell to the Germans, are taken by submarine to blow up the planes on two airfields. Remembering this is a fictional story, these early raids were designed to test the capabilities of the new force rather than any expectation that they would be successful. Stirling’s belief was that despite the overwhelming odds, in this instance there were 30000 enemy troops on the Island, it was possible for well equipped small teams to cause considerable damage and suffer significantly fewer casualties than the traditional assault approach en masse.

I listened to a radio discussion this morning that the Conservative party is questioning the need for Trident replacement or the creation of two new Super air craft carriers and there is also call for a review of the need for heavy tanks as the likelihood of Britain becoming involved in he kind of military wars fought in the two World Wars recedes at a time of exceptional call on public finances. However I also share the concern that any review must be thorough and carried out in conjunction with NATO and in specific instances with G20 nations in general which includes Russia and China. This is because the situation can change dramatically. The Soviet union effectively collapsed within 30 months, just as the recent world economic collapse occurred within six. One new threat is that of piracy and we, even NATO do not have the number of Frigate type vessels to effectively police the Indian Ocean and Russia and China are helping out. However the solution is not to build up a new long term Frigate fleet but deal with how and why the Piracy problem has occurred. This involved the failure of the Somalia state. There are more failed states in the world at the present time than effective ones.

Dirk Bogarde was born Derek Jules Gaspard Ulric Niven van den Bogaerde in a nursing home at 12 Hemstal Road, Hampstead, London, of mixed Flemish Dutch Scottish ancestry, and baptised on 30 October at St. Mary's Church, Kilburn. His father, Ulric van den Bogaerde (born in Perry Barr, Birmingham), was the art editor of The Times his mother Margaret Niven was a former actress.

Dirk served in World War 2, commissioned into the Queen’s Royal Regiment in 1943. He reached the rank of major and served in both the European and Pacific theatres, principally as an intelligence officer. He retained a profound hostility to Germany and its people throughout his subsequent life.

In the film he portrays a man wracked with doubt about his decisions and leadership abilities and is full of guilt at the loss of men and the impact of the assignment on the civilian population.

During the film I was constantly reminded of a similar venture in which a high ranking German officer is captured and taken from the Greek mainland or a similar Island and which involved cute Greek children. In that instance a single boy misleads the Germans and enables the SAS to get to the waiting vessel. In this film there are two boys who help villages provide the force with water and food which enables them to continue with the mission. Only two members of the party, Dirk Bogard and Denholm Elliot manage to escape the island, by swimming towards where they should have been several hours before but are picked up and sit at a table laid with ten places for a promised steak and kidney pie. Three have been killed and five captured but the objectives were successful. However this is fiction and my understanding is that overall the actual early mission of the special forces group were not and serious consideration was given to abandoning the project.

I was disappointed by the Spanish Language and directed 1992 film Belle Epoque which won an Oscar for best foreign language film and also got nine awards in Spain. It also features Penelope Cruz and although her name appears first in credits she plays one of four sister whose parents steal the show and where the main character is a former seminary student, army deserter during the Spanish Civil War. There in two very different films interwoven as one and the two do not work together although I can understand why the film was given awards at the time.

The main story reminds of a film which featured the sexual exploits of a window cleaner and other similar occupations which bring the “hero” into contact with women in their own homes. In Belle Epoque the young man is taken home by a local supporter of the Republican cause which he meets at the local brothel where he was attempting to spend the night lying low having escaped custody of the national guards. The following day the army deserter is about the catch the train to Madrid when he meets the four daughters of the local republican supporter and pretends of have missed his train to spend another night at the family . All four sisters are interested in him from their different perspectives and interests. He has relations with all four and there is some mild bodice ripping although apart from the wicked concept, it is very mild fare compared to after 9 pm contemporary TV and parental guidance films shown in theatre. Our hero is in fact seduced in the first ‘conquest‘, the sister who is a vet has shown dominating male tendencies since childhood so when the guest admits to her father that they have become lovers, father is delighted but young man is quickly disappointed when the young woman declares that this was just a one night fling and she has no interested in further involvement.

The second sister is engaged, of a kind, to the son of a wealthy woman who is a devout Catholic, and he claims to be a Carlist as well as staunch Bible quoting Catholic but he is under his mother’s thumb and again after the seduction it emerges that this is only a single experience they will share. Carlism was an important political force in Spain for one hundred and fifty years until the death of Franco, and adherents wanted the re-establishment of a particular line of Bourbon Monarchs

The eldest sister is a young widow whose husband died in the local river and this nearly happens again when as passion between her and the army deserter flares up she pushes him away and he falls into the river and nearly drowns. Their coupling again proves to be a once only experience. Penelope Cruz plays the youngest sister, a virgin and in this instance the inevitable coupling is halted until a marriage takes place and they are presented as living happy ever after.

What makes the film different from a hundred others of a similar ilk, Tom Jones, Casanova, Confession of a Window Cleaner etc., is that the film is set during the Spanish Civil war and unlike most films which highlight the ruthlessness and brutality of both sides and its impact on communities and families, this is an irreverent and satirical look at what is was like, some of it successful but other ideas are not. It has an Almodovar quality and is an understandable way in which many Spaniards have been able to cope with ending of Franco’s Fascism without resurrecting too many long standing feuds and sense of injustice arising from the Civil War. One has only to think of the reaction in Britain to the Life of Brian, Jerry Springer the Musical to know how difficult it is to poke fun when it is interpreted as poking fun at strongly held beliefs.

In the opening of the film the two Civil Guards are close family friends involved in the capture of the deserter and who suddenly fall out when one suggests they should act on the basis of who will come out on top of the conflict while the other takes the view they must not sides other than representing the established order, unless that order changes. The film reminds of the time the population was divided between communists, monarchists, Carlists, Republications believers and non believers and which divided individuals families as well as communities and where each side retaliated on those who support anyone else, even if they had to under duress. The majority are presented as wanting to be left alone to enjoy the fiestas, go to mass on Sundays, and the local brothel on Saturday night. One guard shoots the other in a rage and then kills himself when he realises what he has done. There was much madness between 1936 and 1939. Aspects of the film shocked the average Spanish audience from the sister who dresses and behaves like a man at the fiesta and the deserter who dresses like a woman in a direct parody of Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis in Some Like it Hot

I enjoyed the role of the father, Manolo, played by Fernando Fernan Gomez. Although he has a regular card playing fixture at the brothel he does not partake on what is on offer because he has erectile dysfunction except with his wife. This is a problem as his wife, spends most of her time abroad with her wealthy impresario lover who finances her wish to be recognised as an opera singer although she is as good a singer as the wife in Alo Alo. When the wife returns home to see her daughters her main wish is to go to bed with her husband because of his prowess and it is the lover who becomes jealous and upset. The film is much about the hypocrisy extreme right and left states and which is revealed when free of tyranny the people quickly revert to their continuing held traditions and beliefs. As Berardinelli and Mark Leaper point out in their reviews this film is more fun than art and more farce than political satire and this is its problem.

The Daily Mail in trying to reflect the opinion of the middle class is committed to ending the Brown administration as quickly as possible and therefore can be accused of presenting a biased selection of Labour Party views about the present leadership although a careful reading of Saturday’s news story by James Chapman, the political Editor, does attempt the balance the chorus of quoted former Ministers calling for a complete make over at the top with, or preferably, without Gordon Brown. The problem is that any change of leadership without a General Election will reinforce the claim of a leadership which has not been put to the electorate for approval and calling a General Election would be suicide for a large number of individual Labour Members of Parliament who if they hold firm have a minimum of a year to plan what to do next or hope for a sufficient political recovery to personally survive as a Member of Parliament even if this result is to become an opposition Member of the Commons, a role which many would prefer as an alternative to having to continually support government policies and decisions with which they are opposed.

The knives also continue to be out for my Member of Parliament as in a separate article there is first the disclosure of an internal memoranda from the within the Foreign Office seeking views on how to mark and celebrate the diversity of faiths within the UK and the world, which is highly appropriate but destined to annoy the bigots of the Church of England and British right wing establishment. That David has been honest and declared his agnosticism has fuelled those who are horrified with his leadership potential. Fearful that David could fill any void if Brown goes or when he goes because he such an all round good guy with an international outlook and special links with the USA through his wife and two adopted children, the piece goes on to accuse him of pushing political correctness and “devotion to gender and race equality together and then claims his inertia and weak leadership is crushing the spirit of those working there according to a Human Resources Consultancy. The Mail does not point the inherent contradiction of the alleged statement because he is accused of being a weak leader while insisting on gender equality and race equality, which if is true confirms suspicion that there is in the Foreign Office still the right wing reactionary and male bigotry they were once branded as being and something which I understood had been systematically rooted out once Labour took control.

The Daily Mail then nailed its flag to the mast in remaining cautious over the centrist leadership of David Cameron, in an editorial calling for him to be more like Margaret Thatcher and then giving the adjacent centre spread and essay by Peter Osborn headed Where’s Maggie Thatcher when we need her.

Quentin Letts also sees the forthcoming vacancy of Governor General of Gibraltar as an opportunity for the Home Secretary especially as the territory has an excellent Pay to view Television service for her husband to enjoy. He also mentions an enjoyable but wicked form of encouragement in that one duty, as the Queen’s representative, is to have lunch every Wednesday with the Chief Minister Peter Caruana, describing him as spidery small town lawyer full of his own self importance. Peter Osborn has two bites of the cherry pie this week with a second piece with the heading, So, who’ll hand him a loaded revolver and a bottle of whisky? Guess who he is talking about?

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