Straight Story, The Terminal, Flag of our Fathers and the Old Curiosity Shop

Another twenty four hours when it could appear that all I have done is watched films, the experience of life of others artificially created. Sometimes I do feel that my life is like that even when I am not watching a film.

Yesterday, that is Christmas Day, the film was about an old man old man who had fought in World War II and encountered another old man, and they were able to share the nature of the horror they had experienced which cannot be shared with anyone else who has not experienced the shock and the horror of war. At least now there is now excuse for anyone not knowing this and at least there are indications that the new Western armies are not treating the lives of their colleagues so cheaply as was done throughout almost the whole of the twentieth century. This man has also known what it is to bury a wife and to share with her the loss of children childhood and the loss of children when they grow up and leave home, or just grow up and become themselves. In his instance he had the attention and interest of a daughter who was slow but knew how to run a home and because she was slow and three children when of these died in an accident while not in her care, the other two were taken into care and the old man and to love with the grief which he knew his daughter felt. The old man had a brother with whom they had been close and spent the summer nights together talking under the stars making the most of things before the harsh winter months returned to dominate their existence, and then in later life as they approached old age brothers being brothers they fell out and did to communicate for a period of ten years. And then the old man learnt that on top of his difficulty in walking and picking things up from the floor he had to change his ways, including the smoking of cigars which had become his one joy in life although he had given up the alcoholic drink. And so he decides it is time to make peace with his brother who lives just over the border of the state across the Mississippi river but also involves a trek across his home state and this poses a problem because his poor sight means he can no longer drive a car on the road and he cannot bear being driven by others for long distance so what does he do?

He attempts to make the journey on his ancient lawn mower, pulling a makeshift camper which comprises a coffin type box to sleep in, on top of other boxes for food, clothes, tools and his walking sticks. Of course he does not get very far when the vehicle breaks down beyond repair and he has to return just like home made boats which attempt to cross oceans and home made planes that jumped of cliffs in order to try and fly like the birds, so what did he do, he uses his savings to buy another second hand lawnmower up to the task of driving at five miles an hour up and down hills for six weeks. This is the Straight Story made in 1999 and directed by David Lynch and based on the feat of Alvin Straight. It is the kind of film which the majority of today's film going generation will find boring, where is the action man? Or the sex?

A similar kind of stubborn determination to finish a task is the subject of the Tom Hanks 2004 starring film The Terminal. However because it is Tom Hanks and there is a romantic interest with the delicious Catherine Zeta Jones many more of twentieth century film goers will have enjoyed this tale of another stubborn man who decides try and fulfil a simple forty year ambition of his recently deceased father, involving a trip from his homeland to the United State and New York and when the task could be completed with moments of locating the whereabouts of one individual. Unfortunately he is not given an entry permit and then finds that his [passport is no longer valid because of civil war back home and he is imprisoned in the JFK airport for month upon month. In this instance the film does not claim to have been based on a true situation which went on for years when an Iranian was required to live at the Paris airport Charles De Gaulle, not for months but for years because his refugee status papers were stolen while in transit, and in fact trhere has been film with a similar story line called Lost in Transit. In this film there are several stretches of the incredulity but the film has the kind of charm and sensitivity of experience that can be expected from Steven Speilberg and while the man completes his mission he does not get the girl, who although she knows her own problem and its solution knows that only one person can break down the walls and release her from the chains, and he does not wish to do so while she remains the delicious woman that she is. The film is harmless entertainment which leaves one feeling good about human beings who will do the right thing when push comes to shove.
The reality of us was not long acoming, first with the second of the Clint Eastward's two films about the taking of the Japanese island rock of Iwo Jima. The first in Japanese provided their viewpoint as to how they fought and died and was based on the discovery years later of a stack of letters written home, but which had become unintentionally hidden.

The second film Flags of our Fathers focussed on the reality of the battle which last thirty five days and the truth of what happened when a handful of men, six, raised the USA flag on a hill overlooking the bay where the vast force has disembarked from the vast navel fleet. The first was a spontaneous gesture which inspired a nature which longed for a meaningful victory over an enemy which had inflicted Pearl Harbour and which occurred only five days into the battle, during which three of the six died. When a fight arose over the ownership of the flag and the need for some permanent record a second flag raising episode was created with a new flag. Thousands of men lost their lives or were maimed for life by the battle and those who raised the original flag while the battle raged as well as those who repeated the venture under order were not heroes because of this action, but were heroes for being part of the force which won the battle against a well defended and organised Japanese force who knew they would lose and die but wanted to do their duty and forestall the US advance for as long as they could.

James Bradley grew up without his father ever talking about what he did in the war or revealing that he was the one naval person seen in the photograph which has become the symbol of American heroism and victory. It was only after the death of his father that he discovered the story and that his father had received the naval cross for valour. He decided to find out about the five other men and the battle.

The Island was of strategic importance in terms of its navel and airbase facilities for both sides and as stated on the fifth day the flag was erected on Mount Suribachi and the Naval Secretary of State, a politician knowing the significance of the action requested that the flag be sent to him as a souvenir and the six men who put up the photographed replacement became the heroes especially when three died in the subsequent fighting without knowing anything of the popularity of the action. Bradley's father has been responsible for arranging for the corpses to be brought home and therefore he quickly learnt how bodies are mutilated war, and in particularly the tortured body of his best friend. By not talking about the experience he was able to marry his grade school girlfriend and become a prosperous undertaker raising a normal family as part of a local community. The film is concerned about how the three survivors were used on their return home to persuade the public to invest in War Bonds. One was a native American Indian who was the subject of segregation and abuse along with the black Americans , while the other was never provided with work opportunities offered when he was today's news worthy man. Controversy also centred over the identity of the sixth soldier with parents only subsequently learning who he was and whom he was not. The film provides universal truths about the nature of war and wartime and its aftermath. The men, and now the men and the woman are required to perform a role and are honoured if they die. The treatment of those who are maimed physically and mentally has remained questionable, because the general public want to forget the reality and subsequently generations do not want to know, and those who did the fighting and he surviving do not want them to know.

The fourth film was at the depressing end of the reality of human nature. The Old Curiosity Shop by Charles Dickens. For the most part it was unbearable Boxing day viewing with perhaps only one of the adults surviving the tale with any integrity or honour. At the core of the story is the willingness of most adults to exploit children, including their own, and the willingness of children to try and do what their parents want, irrespective of how they are treated. Now we like to think this was only a situation during the 19th century and not something which was carried on in varying degrees throughout the twentieth. Unsurprisingly the behaviour of the adults to each other was no better.

I spent the morning listening to radio Gibraltar who covered the Boxing Day swim organised by the Caletta hotel and given the size of the Gibraltarian population the reported numbers were commendable comparing favourably with the 1000 fancy dressed mostly young people who participate in the swim organised by Sunderland Lions at my former home beach of Whitburn sands at Seaburn. A number of prizes were on offer for anyone who answered one of three questions which included the name of the Sunderland football manager who would be shaking the hand of Sur Alex Ferguson at the Stadium of Light. On my 2004 visit to Gibraltar I had had lunch a couple of times at the Man U supporting club close to the former church of my mother and father as well as visiting the Toon on the Rock a grander pub given over to Newcastle United. Part of my email was read out including my prediction that Sir Alex would be the disappointed man at the handshake. Later in response to a request from the programme presenter I gave a more honest assessment anticipating that we might lo a couple of early goals and then fight back during the second half. This proved to be the case although we gave away a third before half time and were never able to master their defence, giving away a fourth and only escaping a home humiliation by good luck and one suspects Man U staying in second or third gear for the greater part of the game. The gulf between the two teams was evident and it is evident the pack will have to be significantly shuffled in January if an immediate return to the Championship is to be avoided. The match of the day was at Chelsea where Aston Villa nearly brought off, and some will say should have brought off the first home defeat in the Premiership for close on four years after going 2,0 up at half time but overall the 4.4 draw was a fair result with Chelsea down to 9 men and the Villa to 10 by the end of the game.

The Last Armoured Train, Black Eagle and The Good Cop

Wednesday has been a solid work day with almost all Christmas cards completed, several with (for me brief letters. One trip to post these later afternoon was also used to buy some fruit and some inexpensive still bottled water, some prawns, and fresh veg. Early evening seems to be a good time for although it is the week before Christmas there is no indication of the customary rush which used to be experienced in greater London and Sunderland Morrison's. The task should be completed in the morning followed by an important afternoon trip and then I can try and relax. There have been two Myspace new friends whose profile and work merits relaxed attention and the ending of seasonal greetings. There are also all those missed birthdays. My equilibrium has been disrupted but do I need want equilibrium any more?

Part of the reason for believing there will be a relaxed few days is the confidence that both the matter which has lasted five years and the more recent concerns re the bank appear to be addressed in such a way that progress has and will continue to be made, hopefully with at least the bank situation being sorted by New Year. I dare not become hopefully about an early resolution of the actual circumstances of the misadventure of the premature and preventable death of my aunt. What is of different concern is the issue of attempted cover up and involving who and at what level?

I have stayed up, half watching cold war meets kung fu nonsense because it was set in Malta, the land of my fathers, so to speak, It is called Black Eagle, after a form of Kung Fu and a vehicle for its exponent Ken Tami. It is a familiar tail of F1 spy plane secret electronics coming down in neutral waters and both sides risking all in clandestine operations to recover the equipment with the Russians, mob handed, and the USA only a magnificent trio involving a priest and multilingual female specialist operator who has to also become a child minder for the sons of the Japanese Kung fu multi talented assassin and recovery man. There is a kind of pretend relationship between the two which is never taken beyond a hint.

Slightly better was a re-showing of the Good Cop in which in keeping with the American mythology of the genre there are two levels of Mafia murdering thieving and gangster, the ones who have codes of honour and gangster integrity recognise that police are only doing their job that is those who cannot be bribed along with the majority of the US justice system from Judges to prison guards and then there are the really bad guards who do the same but have no honour and in this instance it is the brother of the traditional Mafia terrorist. There is also a Marta Hari high class whore who has a soft spot for the good op who gets himself in prison for contempt in order to find out which the various levels of villains is responsible for shooting up his hi fi system. May have the title wrong as research to find out how critics reacted produced One Good Cop and Copland and Good Cop Bad Cop all with different storylines.

I did not expect to find out anything out about what was presented as true story the Russian film The Last Armoured Train. There have been the last Train Home films, Across Canada From Madrid, From Gun Hill and simply the Last Train, also El Ultimo Tren, which does not need to be translated However I was soon on the trail and discovered that the film was originally shown in 2006 as four part series each of 52 mins and is regarded by those interested in Russian cinema as part of the recent new wave with new interest in World War 2 much as in the US and UK we have flocked to Saving Private Ryan or the series Band of Brothers. The core of this film are the characters who successfully and against all manner of odds get the train through to where German army has encircle a Russian army during the first month of the war and the group, with help, enable an honourable retreat. Each of the principal characters has a back story which makes them unlikely to become heroes and heroines Given that this is a film from contemporary Russia it had all the hall marks of the kind of one sided heroic struggle of the people against everyone else which used to be the feature of Stalin culture, in which individual lives are recognised as indispensable for the great good and in the great scheme of things, however having said this the film does not attempt to portray the commanders as soulless and ruthless and the principal characters do not give their lives up willingly, but have a mature understanding of the reality of a war which has only commenced. The leader of the group reacts to the embrace of his new lover at the end of the film, you are alive, with well for the next few days.

I also discovered that there was such a train called the Hurbran used in the Slovakian uprising against the German army in 1944 and as in this film it had too take refuge for a time . The Polish Army also had such a last train at the commencement of World War 2 which had been used in the Polish Soviet War of 1919/21 when they had built 15 new ones after losing 8. This famous survivor was captured when Germany invasion of Poland, and was inspected by Hitler and much photographed. Another armoured train features in a site by Henry Louis Gomez set on "uncovering the truth from the propaganda and dimming memories" of an incident during the last days of the Baptista regime in Cuba. This is the armoured train of Santa Clara. Another article claimed that the Soviet Armoured Trains used in the Great War were used as rear guard weapons because the Germans were better trained. Had I not been so busy I might well have decided to pursue the role of armoured train in World War Two, or its importance in World War 1, something which I cannot recall has ever been a feature of films or documentaries before now. I thought the correct spelling was armoured and then changed when the articles were all under armoured and then changed back when using spell checker,

Wikipedia lists all the armoured train information known for Poland, Russia, Japan Slovakia, Iran, Croatia and France, In 1942 GB used an armoured train for an advance into Siam in an attempt to resist the Japanese advance in Malaya and closer to home an armoured train was used on the Romney Hythe railway as part of coastal defences in WW2.

the Human Factor and Oliver Twist

I awoke and could hear what I interpreted as a nearby house alarm but it seemed to continue on and on as I dozed and came too several times and there I wondered and then I realised what it was and that from 8.30 until 9.48 the buzzer had been my unpacked disconnected alarm clock, but with battery, in the one of the travel bags, somewhere in the house. Just as well the neighbours on the side of the house are away and there is the open patio space on the other.

It has been a leisurely day and commenced with opening and sending a Christmas card and the decision to write an overview of the year, something I used to do, but stopped two years ago. There was no attempt to be comprehensive, and it proved a longer than had time for experience, as I attempted to distil priorities and summarise.

I made do with soup and then there was another letter and card and decisions to sort out this and that, a visit to the Council's environmental centre to dispose of accumulated rubbish, but the pong from the decaying prawn heads and shells was such that I decided to do the supermarket first and acquire some air freshener, but before that I took my suit to the dry cleaners, also my main car wearing coat, but the label was machine washable so it came back via the post office and supermarket where a lot of time was used finding the air freshener, which proved essential once the rubbish was in the vehicle.

It was not until just before the new five day production of Oliver Twist that I felt the need for food, Chinese style chicken wings, a generous carton followed by a puff pastry mince pie. The Oliver Twist is yet to compete with the most recent film production strangely omitted from the Daily Mail Role Replay information which mentions the original 1948 film and the 1968 musical. Oliver Twist is the story of the Male Supremacist nature of early Victorian society ranging from the attitude of the mother of Oliver Twist and the abuse and exploitation of Nancy and the way the ready way in which the upper and middle classes relished sending street children who committed offences to the gallows, on prison ships to the colonies or to hard labour in prisons, or the workhouse. The pervading attitudes of those are still heard on daily chat shows such as five live.

I was then looking forward the last Spooks as there was no advance showing last week but fell soundly asleep. I woke again in time of a gem of a programme about three women who went in search of their parents, two fathers and one mother. The two fathers were found through the Salvation Army service both with positive outcomes but sadly the woman who has spent nearly two decades trying to find if her mother is alive and two years actively enquiring since the death of her father had by the end of the programme failed to make any progress. The national release of a photograph tonight will hopefully produce the breakthrough for her.

I have written before about the power of this drive to know and how society makes this difficult by allowing mother to register births without information about the name and known circumstances of the biological father

Of course there will continue to be deceptions with false information provided and circumstances where the information is not known or where the circumstances are tricky, but as with adoption there should be opportunity when a young person reaches adulthood to be given the option to obtain the available information, with advance counselling provision if requested. The secrecy is often from the best of intentions and there are sometimes other children or family members whose protection is just as significant at the time, but the power to know should carry a right. The kind of crude bestial justice which is part of the Muslim faith in many countries and supported by national laws in relation to the behaviour and position of women, and as used to be and still is the attitude towards the female in predominantly Catholic nations and which underlines the hypocrisy of the male attitude to the Mary's in the life of Jesus of Nazareth, is symptomatic of male supremacist societies. The way the House of Commons is organised with the gladiatorial combat of Prime Minister's Question Times is another and oh for a Prime Minister with the self confident guts to refuse to perform for their party and for the benefit of the medias, for opposition leaders with similar self confidence, guts and integrity.

And what is this nonsense of the latest sound bite politics of the Liberal Democrats, power to the people, regardless of consequence in terms of justice as fairness, Hullo just as it is fair, is it? for English families to pay for the Scots to enable their children to go to University without the mill stone of charges or for the elderly to retain the value of their savings when they require residential care or comprehensive care, we are now to support the reactionary Liberal notion that it is OK if those who are interested in power holding decide to introduce fascist approaches to the running of hospital or schools, or reintroduce poor law type institutions, of course liberals don't, so why spout the claptrap echoed by Paddy Ashdown and no doubt the assembly of other former party leaders rejected by heir own members or the country at one time or the other, and two men again after the party demonstrated as all the major parties do their ageism. The hypocrisy of attitudes towards, children, the old and the female has not changed although in society in general there is change with recent examples the Queen demonstrating what a better job she has done than any man or that splendid engineer project coordinator for the St Pancras enterprise. This is not an issue of physiological prejudice but of attitude and approach.
This work of tracing missing parents is one role for the Salvation Army who apparently is able to trace 80% of the 4000 requests for help each year and merits greater public recognition. The figures mean over 30000 quests have been solved in the past decade alone.

I then finished the evening with a poor Le Carre type spy traitor film based on a Graham Green, The Human Factor, the last film of the Man with the Golden Arm Otto Preminger and a screen play by Tom Stoppard. The film has nothing original in terms of story and characterization and is light years away from series such Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. The double Spy, is Nicole Williamson an actor who has never been convincing or impressed me with a cast of many talents, Richard Attenborough, Robert Morley, Sir John Gielgud and Derek Jacobi and I could have been better employed with my time but once commenced I felt obliged to see it through.

Yesterday was the penultimate programme about the Queen featured the number of official visits, a Royal Garden Party and an aborted visit to open the new Arsenal Football club and broadened to other family members with Charles and Camilla travelling to organic farmers and them meeting farmers in a local pub. The Garden party was interesting because it is regarded as a treat for those who will not make it to an investiture. People dress expensively and queue for half an hour to get in but are given free entry into the Palace and a scrumptious tea of fine fare before being gathered in lines for a family walkabout in which individuals are pre selected to have a few words said to them by the Queen. On hot days as the summer of a year ago, so distant now St Johns was much in demand. Those who are considered VIP's have their own Marquee and a special walk walkabout session. The one important conclusion from the series which has its last episode at Christmas is the serious effort which the firm makes to fit in and understands contemporary society at all levels. It is difficult for anyone wanting to do the job and to attempt consistent professional perfection for decade upon decade. The nature of his task was wonderful portrayed by one stupid woman who drags her mother and son around the country to wave flags and get a close up of the Queen. At one level she was awful cringing embarrassing and one wondered how many of the flay wavers were of this ilk, but she also fulfils an important constitutional function that our brings in he tourist need for the public flag waver, and in fairness I would rather have her as Queen follower than yet another idiot giving credence that those waste of space personalities to contribute nothing to society except their lack of substance.

At last someone has said in the media what I have long suspected, that just as those behind the TV telephone competitions were able to fix outcomes with thousands continuing to phone with no chance of winning, the question has been asked of the X Factor and were thousands prevented from phoning in order to fix the outcome? How could a margin of 1% change to 10% so quickly? Did the earlier votes still count?

A Shot at Glory

I have just watched one of the better films about football and the fans and supporters of lower division clubs although it was full of clichés, it hit the right note, including sound track by Mark Knofler and was a cut above the usual for this genre by a great performance by Robert Duvall, and a supporting cast heavyweight Brian Cox. Through out the film I knew I knew the co star but it was only afterwards I realised he was one of the great Scottish centre forwards of all time Ally McCoist of Rangers who I first saw play as a young lad at Sunderland where he never delivered the high expectation until he went back to his homeland, subsequently following his career as a consequence, enjoying his commentating and pleasantly surprised to find that he was also able to act. Ally played at Ranger for 15 years 581 appearances and 355 goals, winning 8 league titles 9 League cups but only 1 Scottish Cup. He played 61 games for Scotland and after retirement in 1998 he became a TV commentator and pundit until earlier this year he went into Management as an Assistant to Walter Smith at where, Rangers, where else!

In the Robert Duvall never won anything as a player and missed out on big time management refusing to speak to his former colleague now manager of Rangers for two decades or his daughter who married someone of a different religion and where in Scotland Catholics supporting Celtic and the Orange Order Protestants Rangers (the role played by McCoist) who is bought in by a new owner who warns that if they do not get into the big time he will transport the team to Ireland. The team has become the talisman for the small Scottish town with a good Salmon river nearby and picturesque countryside. McCoist the actor has all the problems associated with get rich and famous players, drink dependency and a fierce temper, cannot resist the women who throw themselves at him or engage in fisticuffs with opposing fans, opposing players and anyone who insults or abuses him. However the team to win promotion from division two to one and then aim for the Premiership and get to the Cup Final, against who, why Rangers of course and then what happens you must see the film.

Letters from Iwo Jima and Moscow Mission

I skated over the two foreign films with sub titles watched earlier in the week Clint Eastward's Letters from Iwo Jima was not an enjoyable film to experience. While some characters are fictional the main battle and stories of the commanders is based on fact and two non fiction works. While the film was more commercially popular in Japan than the US although receiving awards and nominations it not without its critics for still being American perspective on Japanese culture and value at that time although marketed as the story of the battle from the Japanese viewpoint. It will be no consolation however to the thousands of families of those who died fighting for this iconic lump of sand and rock without freshwater.

The Russian adventure film I forgot to note but may be Moscow Mission, not to be confused with the 1943 Mission to Moscow was a conventional anti terrorist extortionist caper when the sub plot was the battle between the conventional security and police forces and a group of creatives who succeed with their inspirational and unconventional methods. It is the kind of group you disappear if things go wrong but take all their glory if they go well. While the Japanese film confirmed the Japanese solder as courageous, sometimes brutal but loyal to his superiors and the national cause, prepared to kill themselves than yield to the enemy, the Russian could have been Americans or Brits except for the language.

Today I visited a hardware store for a new toilet seat, as the existing was discovered broken at one of its hinges, a great mystery because it did not happen when I was using although it may have happened gradually through natural wear. The next task is to remove the old and fix the new.. I will leave this until I have completed the chapter of Northern Rivera on Times Past. This brings me to yesterdays completed work on the Arbeia Roman Fort.

Mitch Sydner Story, Charles Chilton, My Boy Jack and Remembrance Day

The sun was shining when I left to walk down my hill and then up the long hill to the Town Hall for the assembly of the Remembrance Day Parade and then continue up the hill to where the Cenotaph is inappropriately located for a large gathering of service and ex service and other citizens to assembly. During the service there was a rainbow in the distance and some splattering of rain. Later there was a plethora of programmes, many overlapping centred on this Remembrance day which appeared to be having renewed significance as the numbers in Whitehall and locally have grown during the past two years as the number of casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan have increased.

The programme schedules included choice of programme with two plays on at the same time and Life and Nothing But on BBC4. I can watch one and record the other, Earlier there are similar spoilt for choice problems.

5.50 6.50 BBC 1 Wilfred Owen

6.30-7.30 Not Forgotten Channel 4

6.50-7.50 BBC 2 Cenotaph Highlights

7.00-800Verdun Descent into Hell repeated midnight

7.05 The Girl and the General TCM World War film

8.00-9.00 What did you in the Great War Daddy BBC4

9-11.00 My Boy Jack on ITV

9-10.30 Life is nothing BBC1

9.00 Digging Up the Trenches

9.00-11.00 The Last Tommy Uk History

01.00 Ypres Gas Hell

12.10-12.40 Chelsea Pensioners

Before all this I discovered an interesting biographical film, The Samaritan The Mitch Synder Story, Mitch (1946-1990) appears to have been outwardly a conventional American who was married with two children and working in advertising in New York when sometime before 1970 he abandoned his work and family, and went in search of his true self, but in 1970 he was arrested and imprisoned when it was discovered that the vehicle in which he was travelling with a friend was stolen. In prison he became a born again Christian and a believer in non violence and joined the Community for Creative Non Violence in Washington DC. This organisation which was involved in non violent direct action in relation to the Vietnam War, also provided a medical clinic, a pre-trial house, soup kitchen, thrift store and half way house.

There was a growth in the number of homeless destitute people in the later 1970's and 1980's and Mitch Synder was a major figure in the campaign to obtain official help and support for the provision of accommodation and other services, involving demonstrations, public funerals for those freezing to death and fasting as well as, other direct action which involved illegal activity. The motion picture film is very sympathetic toward Mitch who had many critics, because of his background and methods which included a tendency to exaggerate figures. Nevertheless Jesse Jackson, Cher and one of his two sons walked in the march honouring his life after he committed suicide and the conveys that he was a man wracked with self doubt and self criticism with his campaigning years as a form of atonement

My plan was to record the programme on Wilfred Owen in another room while watching Ian Hislop's visual essay on the social impact of the war, but having decided to watch the opening of the Jeremy Paxman film on Owen, I abandoned the Hislop. I became affected by the poets of the Great War at the very time I was campaigning against the development of weapons of mass destruction, the inevitable progression from the mechanisation of war commenced by Germany in the years leading to 1914

As a young man I came across his poems together with those of Rupert Brooke where I have two volumes, and Siegfried Sassoon and in 1997 I saw the film Regeneration based on the book by Pat Barker which concentrates on the relationship between Owen, who had shell shock post traumatic stress, and Sassoon who had been banished to Craiglockhart hospital because of his criticism of the military leadership and approach to the continuation of the war. Owen recovered sufficiently to return to the front and the letters to his mother reveal the changes that he had undergone and which had led to the creation of poems which are now the most venerated in the English language after Shakespeare. The programme revealed the extent of the influence and involvement of Siegfried Sassoon on his writing, and which in the examples given showed that he helped to make the writing more direct and powerful. Having made the decision to watch the whole of the film I continued by watching the official recording of the morning's national service of Remembrance. The South Shields Member of Parliament represented the government together with the Prime Minister.

After this there was a moving programme about the children of some of the men who did not return with a major voice of influence from my childhood, Charles Chilton recounting that he never knew his father, and that his mother died when he was six, leading to being raised by his grandparents. Charles joined the BBC when he was 15, as a messenger, and after becoming an assistant in the record library commenced to produce a weekly jazz programme, the Radio Rhythm Club before the commencement of World War II.

During five years of War service in the RAF he ran the Forces Radio station in Sri Lanka with David Jacobs, and on return he was responsible for two programmes which dominated my adolescence and first period as a young man in work, the time when I discovered the world of big band jazz, and the traditional jazz revival in around Soho, modern jazz and classical music through the Promenade concerts at the Royal Albert Hall, buying a season ticket. The First radio programme which influenced me greatly and lasted five years was Riders of the Range based on the history of Western America and between 1953 and 1959 he wrote and produced Journey into Space. Having achieved professional success Charles commenced to investigate the reality of the World War in which his father had died and together with Joan Littlewood they created what was regarded as controversial at the time, the musical Oh What a Lovely War at the Theatre Royal Stratford in 1963 transferring Wyndhams Theatre. In 1969 Richard Attenborough directed and produced the film which has that extraordinary image of an endless field of crosses and which starred John Mills, Laurence Olivier, John Geilgud, Michael Redgrave, Maggie Smith and Susannah York.

I am convinced that I saw the production at the Theatre Royal and that I have a programme but can I find, it although I have collated all my programmes from for forty years in one box, Having yesterday written about visiting a show at Great Yarmouth the ticket confirms that I sat in row K12 of the stalls at 8.40 on Sunday August 30th for Grace Kennedy in Concert at the Britannia Theatre, but further research will be required to establish the year. Charles Chilton who is an active 90 was only one of bereaved children whose memories of their brief contact with their fathers remains as alive to day and it was when that had the experience.

These included the daughter whose 15 year campaign led to the pardon of her father executed for shell shock. Others visited the war graves including one who not finding a grave with his father's name was directed to a monument on which are listed the 35000 men missing presumed dead who remains were never found. This was but one of the 200 cemeteries
These programmes were the right build up for an excellent new film Drama My Boy Jack based on the fact that Rudyard Kipling fixed for his son to become a Commissioner Officer, in the Irish Guards at the age of 17, despite the inability to see without glasses, and he approved that his son could go to the front and into battle before his 18th birthday. He died that day in 1915 but it was four years before the parents accepted that he had died, .and Kipling is believed to have felt guilty by writing the lines "If any question why we died, because our fathers died."

Kipling who went out of fashion in the sixties was part of my Childhood. His poems were taught at school and I grew up with those made into films watching recently for the umpteenth time the film Gunga Din made in 1939 staring Douglas Fairbanks Junior and the earlier 1937 Captains Courageous with Spencer Tracey and Mickey Rooney, remade for television in 1977 and again 1996. There was also Kim Errol Flynn in 1950 with Peter O'Toole for TV 1984. His poem Mandalay was used for the Song On the Road to Mandalay, but perhaps the best known and loved have been the Jungle Book stories with films made 1937, in 1942, 1994, 1997 and 1998 with a new two year project commenced this year and perhaps the best known film being the 1967 animated version ,recently released as a special DVD edition, His just so stories have also been enjoyed by children for a century. He received the Nobel prize for Literature in 1907. His belief and commitment in the British Empire as positive development, his distrust of Germany intentions, like Churchill subsequently, led him to campaigning for rearmament, 150000 men against 1.5 million at the time and that he was a key part of the propaganda committee during the war.

It would be surprising if tonight's film did not attract a major audience because the part of his son was played by the young man who the present generation has witnessed grow up on screen from the ages of 12 to 18 years as Harry Potter, Daniel Radcliffe. It is worth underlining that the Harry Potter books are now the greatest international best sellers of all time and that the films have so far earned over four thousand million dollars at the box office, greater than James Bond films of which there have been 21 and the six Star wars together. The contrast between the two roles could not be greater and such was the level of performance that it was only after watching the film that I worked out who the young actor was, although I accept I was probably the only viewer that did not know. The performance is likely to be awarding winning and already Imperial War Museum and Sussex University have mounted exhibition about the story of the Kipling's son, and the parental search for what happened to him which lasted four years after he disappeared at the battle of Loos. I can understand this need to establish the precise circumstances and if established the fear and the pain which their child experienced. It is a personal need, although at times it is coupled with a compulsion to ensure that others also understand what happened and why. Most learn or know that it will not help to prevent similar situations arises such is the true nature of human behaviour, although if the individual stories touch and influence others in a small way then that is a bonus. I hope I begin to go someway in explaining that memory in all its forms is the meaningful art experience of today.

Bourne Ultimatum, Stockyard Channing, Three Came Home, Little Richard, Churchill's Bodyguard.

A very different kind of personality from Billy Bob Thornton is Stockyard Channing; you know the young woman who plays alongside John Travolta and Olivia Newton John in Grease. Stockyard is her maiden surname name. What I had forgotten is that Stockyard's major work is a play which became a film. Six degrees of separation. This is the concept that if everyone is one step away from each person you know, you are then two steps away from each person they know, then it can be demonstrated that we are all six steps away from everyone in the world.

In 1994 this concept was applied by two students to the actor Kevin Bacon through connecting him to other actors through no more than six connections, and which was then taken up by Kevin Bacon develop a network of involvement in charities and that we all can be connected to accomplish something good. In 2006 a TV series was launched in the USA with covers the experiences of six New Yorkers who go about their lives without realising they are affecting each other and gradually meet one another. From the except of the film, it is immediately added to the must see list and I did not understand why I did not see it when it was released until I remember the date 1993, the year when I completed the writing of a novel. It is not a valid excuse but the novel could have been that much better had I viewed the film. A belief I will put to the test. I commenced one piece of recent writing "There was Adam and there was Eve, and you and me and we are all connected. There is nothing original left to say, except in the way it is retold.

I have seen the Stockyard Channing Actor's studio interview before but watched it recently again with increased intensity and awareness. I had come to know her acting from the West Wing as the President's wife, but never made the connection with Grease.

I have also viewed Little Richard the about 2000 made for TV biopic although his life had previously interested me because of the lifelong raging conflict between his religious upbringing and beliefs and his success as a rock and roll singer and being part of that sometimes murky underworld where Brittney Spears in the USA and Amy Winehouse in the UK are the present day descendents.

Little Richard is in fact Richard Wayne Penniman born seven years before me whose father was a bootlegger and his grandfather an evangelical preacher, thus the eternal conflict between good and evil between the spirit and the flesh, and between the church goer and rock and roller were established in him through his genes and his nurturing. Leaving aside the bootlegging his was a spiritual family, part of a group of singers at churches called the Penniman Singers and it is said that from the earliest age Richard was known for his loud screaming singing voice which became his trademark. He is the second individual, one a MySpace friend who was influenced in their childhood by Sister Rosetta Sharp a Gospel singer whose LP I bought as a young man just out of school and have to this day. Another was Mahalia Jackson who I believe featured in the amazing Jazz on film work Jazz on a Summer's Day which I first saw on the first full day after being in prison for six months.

Now Little Richard is known for his songs such as Tutti Fruiti, Lucille, Long Tall Sally, and the Girl Can't Help it, from the film of the same name and for the fact that at the height of his career in 1957 while on tour in Australia he stopped overnight and became a born again Christian, studied and became a preacher himself. Between the later 1950's and early 1960's when I had become a political and social activist and then went into university level further education while he also performed and issued new records these were of Gospel music, a period which is truncated in the film, but my the mid sixties he was persuaded to six again his former his and this led him back to the lifestyle which went with it. Since then he has swung between the extremes of his life and significantly from my viewpoint the is someone else who has worked out that everyone is a mixture of good and evil, sinner and saintliness and that those painted all black or all white may be towards one end of the spectrum but they are never all one or all the other, something which the early Christians leaders ensured was included in their written life of Christ and of the Apostles.

Little Richard is generally regarded as one of the most influential and significant of the first Rock and Rollers with artists such as Ray Charles, Elvis Presley, Paul McCartney and John Lennon, Mick Jagger, David Bowie, Bob Dylan and Jimmie Hendrix all proclaiming him as the greatest influence on their work. The Beatles opened the show for one Little Richard Tour while Jimmy Hendrix another. Billy Preston became a protégé and White Supremacists persuaded Pat Boone to release a number of covers which led to the comment that young people had Boone records on their players to satisfy their parents and Little Richard originals under their beds.

Shortly after the death of my mother I went to see the Bourne Ultimatum, having previously watched the first two films of the trio in cinema, and then back to back on a TV channel so that it was possible to make an evaluation of the series to-date. I say to-date because it is evident from the ending of the new film that a fourth remains a possibility. The Bourne Ultimatum is the back story for the other two, and tells how he was recruited as a volunteer, knowing what was to happen to him. However the story is also brought vividly into contemporary American hypocrisy as the focus is the discovery that within the CIA there is a high level chain which not only disregards the rule of law and the US constitution to execute terrorists and anti American interests, but the ultimate crime, Americans and members of the CIA are executed or attempted executions for not going along with the policy. I was left with the distinct impression that what they were doing would have been OK as long as they had not started to get rid of their own. However the film is good fun with prolonged noisy car and other chases which has become a feature of some films and which enable me to doze off having seen it all before.

A very different kind of film was watched yesterday on TV called Three Came Home made in 1950 and starring Claudet Colbert. It is a film I am likely to have seen at the Odeon Wallington with my mother and the two sisters when I lived with them as my aunties. It features a family who are part of the civilian administration of somewhere in the East who are required to surrender to Japan and placed in nearby prison camps and which is brilliantly portrayed in the series Tenko and A Town Like Alice. Produced just after the war Three Came Home has a highly contrived ending which undermines the truth of all that went on before with its happy o all happy endings. The film emphasises the dependency that most wives had on their husbands with the consequence of what happens to the women when there is enforced separation? The answer is that that they quickly realise that they are not only just as strong, as their men folk, I suspect even stronger, on the issues that matter such as caring and protecting their children, but quickly develop ways of coping and surviving for themselves. Not all did of course but that has always been so for all people, irrespective of their age, colour and gender, but the majority do, unless they are wiped out at a stroke, as in this film when the wife and children of the POW island/area commander learns that having moved his family out of Tokyo for their safety they are obliterated at Hiroshima I thought the film was amazingly honest about English and Japanese attitudes and behaviour, considering its time, although it did stereotype the Australian POW's as I want to get into your knickers regardless of age or looks.

I also managed to catch one of the final if not the final episode of the series of films based on the full memoirs of Churchill's Bodyguard which also chronicles Churchill's role in the world war. In this episode his successful effort to end the civil war in Greece and create a non communist administration is covered together with the infamous Yalta conference in which Churchill and the UK was sidelined and Roosevelt effectively surrendered much of middle and eastern Europe to Russia because he trusted the word of Stalin and feared the ambitions of Churchill. I must find out if this was true. For me the most important aspect of the film was to learn that over 1000 V2 ballistic rockets were dropped on the UK until the German Army was pushed back the 200 miles beyond their range. The programme brought out how the first rocket bombs were put down to gas explosions although it was never explained why the rest of the gas supply was never affected. The government feared the loss of morale would affect the willingness to cope with further loss of life, one has only to see public reaction to the deaths of professional soldiers and airmen Iraq and Afghanistan now to appreciate the government viewpoint then. However when the truth was released in the USA media the public resolve in the UK continued. A lesson for modern day politicians.

Billy Bob Thornton Films

Bill Bob Thornton, Who? I asked myself when I read that he was the subject of the latest in the Actors Studio production on MainStreet and I decide to watch and at first believe I have discovered a new hero. Why I ask myself over a cup of tea having decided to stay up beyond the permitted hour in order to maintain the regime necessary for the time given to being at the hospital. I liked his openness and honesty and his understanding of the nature of happiness and sadness being part of the same experience as love and hate and all other emotions usually considered to be, and for advocating that everyone should write and its cathartic value and bringing of new insight and for being dyslexic and finding reading difficult.

Billy Bob has titled his published biographical notes A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Southerner which is a good way of communicating his creativity against the background of a poor rural based family of a white father and part native American Italian mother who is a psychic, living in the segregated Arkansas in the 50's and 60's, but although his background and way of life, where his grandfather a forest ranger shot the family food for his early years, he is able to looks back with warmth at his childhood and the close relationship with developed with his younger brother of a year and half. Despite an attention reading and understanding difficulty he started to write stories at an early age and was sufficiently self confident to take part in school theatricals. His reading including William Faulkner and Erskine Caldwell whose work did not influence me until much later. His music influence were of the era of Presley, Jim Reeves, the Beatles and other British bands. His self confidence was such that he directed a grade school production of Dracula. He was also an active sportsman achieving local success in baseball. The background to this point appears part of the American Dream, Poor Kid, unpromising background, begins to make by success at school. He even got a try out for the Kansas City Royals but a freak accident broke his collarbone and ended this route.

During the 1970's two events commenced a process which changed the direction and nature of his future life. His father died of cancer in 1973 at the age of 44 shortly after his graduation at the of 18 years and then four years later after a variety of local manual work jobs and then with an aspiring novelist they decided to try their fortune first in New York and then on the West Coast, He returned home married a local girl with whom he had a daughter, and but this did not last.

It is then the published biography reveals something which the Lipton interview did not, or if it did I missed it because he commenced a study of psychology at Henderson State University, although it does not state why he left except that in part because of a home town connection with then Governor Bill Clinton he got a manual job in the state highways department. And then he also got a job in a residential facility for the elderly with psychiatric and behavioural problems which is a third link, the caring of his father as the eldest son, the study of psychology and the working with sufferers of mind and feeling which revealed the sensitive and insightful soul that was emerging. The hard working life was balanced with performing in a rock band doing covers and trying to find acting work.

In 1984 as he approached his 30th birthday Bill Bob decided to move back to California with his friend Tom Epperson where he struggled and starved, marrying for a short time to a future ceramicist and sculpture, but also getting small part jobs in TV shows, with perhaps Knots landing being one which reached UK screens that vaguely remember. The Bill Clinton connection continued with the Governor keeping in contact with his mother to find out her eldest lad was doing and she said to him that she was confident of her boys eventual success predicting he would an Oscar which she would attend with him.

In the Actor's studio Bill Bob emphasised the significance of the death of his younger brother from a heart attack at the age of 20 while working as a chef at a Hard Rock café but also a talented musician. Bill Bob as many actors and artists do also had spells as a manager of a Pizza Parlour and as a waiter at Hollywood social functions. While the image of a southern hard living boy could to be projected with tattoos and drugs and no doubt alcohol as well as two failed marriages, it is the impact of his brother's death along with that of his father that help to understand th insight and depth of understanding of human behaviour which has subsequently brought to his screen performances as a character actor rather than a screen personality which is why I did not know his name, but knew some of his work well.

The work which I liked without taking in the main character was played by Billy Bob is the 200 Cohen Brothers The Man who was not there and who wife has an affair with Soprano James Gandolfini. The Cohen brothers are niot everyone's cup of tea and when I think of them I think to the ultimate joke of someone saying it is raining cats and dogs and you have guessed it the sky is full of falling cats and dogs, The Man who was not there is a more serious "Hitchockian" film, or is it.

I also enjoyed Pushing Tin which does more to reduce the inclination to travel in airplanes than most environmental campaigning. This was the filly where Billy Bob met the stated "love of his life", Angelina Jolie. The film which brought Bill Bob International recognition, alas except by me was Slingblade which Billy Bob wrote and directed and played the central character who has been locked away in an institution from the criminally insane since the age of nine because he has murdered his mother and her lover, and is released because he is believed to have been cured and sets out on a pathway to redemption or is he. This much I gleaned from the show and a review of the film but it is not a film I immediately want to add to the must see list, I have seen at least six of the other forty films where he has had a involvement, possibly half a dozen and where I have no image of a performance by him without reading reviews and seeing some of the listed films, so why does he immediate rank as a hero and then become eliminated after I read what he had written or agreed to be written about his life. I recognise the darkness within which has made him the great character actor that he has become.

The Happy Breed and Viscious Circle

A book which I would like to read is the Life in Letters of Graham Green by Richard Green (Little and Brown) and reviewed by Ian Thompson. I have Brighton Rock, DVD of film, The End of the Affair seen the film, The Quiet American, seen the film, The Confidential Agent, A burnt Out case, Stamboul Train, Our Man in Havana seen the film,, the Comedians, seen the film, A gun for sale, The Ministry of Fear seen film and the Heart of the Matter. He also wrote The Third man, have the DVD and Fallen Idol seen the film. The review mentions that Green and his family were unhappy with the work of his official biographer because in the 2000 pages of his three volume detailed how the life mirrored the writing rather than concentrate on a literary chronicle and appreciation. This makes me what to read the biographies and avoid the literary criticism.

this afternoon a subtitled version of The Happy Breed so my mother could also view from time to time. This 1939 play by Noel Coward traces the fortunes of an ordinary and respectable South London English family from just after World War 1 to just before World War 2 and was designed to remind everyone the important values which had enable the nation to survive both the World War and the challenges of day to day life afterwards. David Lean produced the 1944 film as his first venture with Robert Newton in a serious lead role, although I always see him as Long John Silver in Treasure Island. Celia Johnson who epitomised the normal wife who puts everything into rearing her children her way, only to face the reality of their individualism and mortality., Stanley Holloway, Get to the church Time My Fair Lady plays the good army friend neighbour whose son, John Mills, plays one his many upright salt of the earth young men who fought in World war 2. Sir Lawrence Olivier did his bit with the narration as well as the producer. I guess most young cinema goers will find this film as hard going as the plays of William Shakespeare and prefer Vinnie Jones in The Riddle


The Vicious Circle made 50 years ago is a John Mills Tour de Force based on a Francis Durbridge book which kept my attention at the hospital this afternoon. Two films by John Mills in two days. The plot when briefly stated does not suggest a taught credible suspense drama in which Mills a high class Harley Street type doctor who is effectively framed by, well I will leave this bit out, except to remind of what one experienced Member of Parliament said to a new recruit who commented on the enemy on the opposite benches. No came the stern rebuke, they are your political opponents, and your enemies sit all around you. Only last five minutes destroyed the good work achieved before and the final moments were silly. Stalwarts Lionel Jeffries, Mervyn John and Roland Culver put in their usual good performances and once more reminded of my childhood going to cinema three to four time a week.

La Vie En Rose, Lots of War Films and my past

The sun, the walks, the unexpected discoveries have nicely counterbalanced the reality of the lives who require hospital treatment, and the impossible task of doctors, nurses and other staff who are expected to have a magic wand to the ready whatever the situation and its complexity.

On Sunay evening as I set off for Gateshead to watch La Mome: La Vie en Rose at the temporary Tyneside Film Theatre in the former Town Hall building, the sky above the Tyne was spectacularly darkening although when I left three hours later there was no trace of the anticipated cloudburst. There was a cold chill and I appreciated my forethought in bringing a coat in the car although it would have been better if I had then taken it into the Old Town Hall with me. It is an odd quirk that within the past week I have visited two former Town Halls in Sunderland, one in South Shields and one in Gateshead, with the latter being the most difficult to find.

The Tyneside Film Theatre occupies a warren of an old building close to the Theatre Royal in Newcastle and for the past 18 months it has been extensively remodelled with an addition floor height and I would be surprised if the work is completed before next summer. This was my first visit to its temporary location and it was well that I allowed plenty of time because before getting access to the car park at the front of the building whose stone work has been under wraps for an even longer period, I found myself doing circuits of the town and going over the main bridge into Newcastle, then having to take the short tunnel into the centre by pass before crossing over to take the reverse route in order to get back to where I had started. This enabled me to see the new pedestrian bridge which connects Northumbria University with its new campus on a site where there was a multiplex and restaurant complex and a large car park. Now there are modern full of glass university buildings towering above the dual carriageway. The bridge was pre constructed and put into place over a few days, is attractive to look at and improves the look of this part of the city, as do the new buildings, one of which suffered from a fire before completion.

Edith Piaf's life ended when I was in my first term at Birmingham University but I remember something of the publicity which surrounded her funeral with Paris acknowledged in numbers after the Catholic Church refused to give her a mass because of the life she had led. I also had heard her sing on the radio during my tesns and acquired a copy No Regrets issued in 1961, There was a time when I would have included this on the Myspace profile but I cannot say I agree with its sentiments anymore. Regrets I have had a few, Frank Sinatra My Way being more appropriate. Although in this biopic she is quoted as immediately adopting My Regrets on first hearing because it expressed what her life was about, the rest of film also makes the point that she was full of great regret.

I believed I knew the essentials of her life from various TV documentaries but I cannot remember if I have seen the Pam Gems show of the 1990's. The grave of Edith Piaf was visited at the Pere Lachaise Cemetery on my first visit to the city although I had driven the car there previously to catch the motor-rail south in the 1970's. She was also one whose profile I searched Myspace and where I selected the Bostonian Ziaf tribute group with snippets of four songs which includes Non je ne regrette and have kept faith with them since although it also time to remedy the absence of an original recording. However while I have always been fascinated by the story of her life apart from the handful of well known numbers such as Milord and No regrets, her repertoire of over 250 songs failed to engage because they are in a language I do not understand although I liked the sound of a voice reflecting the life she is known to have led.

The film was a great disappointment although Marian Cotillard is brilliant transforming her face and body from a teenage singing beggar on the streets and dives of Paris into the self inflicted middle aged wreck fearing death yet embracing it because she knew she could sing no more and hoped she would be reunited and make peace with those she had loved and lost. The Director Olivier Dahan decided against a chronological account switching constantly between the final moments of her life to her childhood and episodes in her rise to fame in order to try and communicate the essence of her being, and which he accomplished to a significant extent: the abandoned starving and sick girl; a life on the streets and among the brothels of Paris; the lack of any moral foundation and self control: the craving for a love with she could only find by pouring out her longing and past experience to adoring audiences when she sang live to the extent that she had to perform get this fix even when it accelerated the process of self destruction.

The film failed because despite its length it missed or skated over key aspects and the hold she had on Paris, France and younger contemporary singers.

Edith, named after Edith Cavell, Giovanna Gassion was born in the immigrant district of Belleville in 1915 to a 20 year old part Italian café singer mother from a Tuscan port who was then only 20, and a contortionist acrobat 15 years older than his wife. The film suggested to me that her mother had left Edith with a grandparent only after the disappearance of her husband and she needed to travel to get work, when in fact they both abandoned their baby child to a relative. It was father who then took the child to his mother who worked as a cook in a brothel in Normandy and the prostitutes helped to bring up the child, although one can assume that it was her mother who taught her to sing.

The film does cover the fact that she was allegedly blind for a time, but not that the period stretched for six years until she was fourteen, but is accurately shows that she was taken on a pilgrimage honouring Saint Therese de Lizieu and which the film suggests convinced Edith that the Saint was personally intervening in her life and which in turn convinced her that her prayers helped the subsequent reputed love of her life to win a world boxing title.

The film blatantly misleads by compressing early events to avoid having to use two child actresses portraying that she is only still a child waif when after World War 1 service her father takes Edith with him on his street work and finds that she has more pulling power with her voice than his own act. In fact she was a very worldly young woman of fourteen when she joined him, breaking with her father shortly after she commenced to have success, and bearing a child when she was sixteen from a relationship with a seventeen year old. The child died two years alter. The film does not mention this at all but does communicate that father, mother and Edith were lifelong alcoholics and which led their respective premature deaths.

Edith was joined on the streets and dives of Paris by her half sister and they enjoyed a wild life of sex, drink and drugs as some teenagers do today until discovery by Louis Leplee who had a club off the Champs Elysee of the kind that in London was frequented by the Kray twins and a leading Conservative politician. Edith combined singing in the club as La Mome Piaf, the waif, little or kid sparrow, with her life as the mistress of a pimp who she is said to have given the greater part of her income to avoid being just one of his other girls. One of her friends killed herself rather than submit to the boyfriend pimp and he then shot Edith when she tried to break up with him because of this. When Leplee was then found murdered it is not surprising that the police thought she was implicated because of her involvement with the criminal mobsters responsible.

For a time she was out of favour and then she had a "romantic" relationship with Raymond Asso which the film portrays as a love hate relationship professionally as he turned her from an untrained and unprofessional singing waif into Edith Piaf international singing sensation getting her to understand and act out her songs and arranging for Marguerite Monnot to create songs which depicted her previous life on the street.

The film effectively conveys that she then became a selfish and self indulgent Prima Donna and for once there is no reference to all the good charitable work which such individuals usually undertake to balance out their wilder excesses. Edith, now known as Edith Piaf developed a circle of well known friends such as Maurice Chevalier, the playwright Jean Cocteau, staring in one of his one act plays, and the poet Jacques Borgeat who wrote the lyrics of many of her songs. It is historical fact that she then discovered Yves Montand who became her lover and part of her stage performances until he became a leading performer in his own right and the relationship ended as quickly as it began. During the war she lived above a brothel frequented by German soldiers and some of her critics have suggested she was too friendly with the occupying power.

It was after the war that she became internationally recognised and commenced her visits to the USA, at first unsuccessfully but then with ongoing success, with two concerts at Carnegie Hall. It is during the transatlantic and European travels that she commenced a relationship with the married boxer Marcel Cerdan who Piaf and her biographers describe as the love of her life. He was killed in a plane crash in 1949 on his way to the USA for a rematch with La Motta whose world middle weight titled Cerdan had taken. I am not saying that she was not passionate about the man who made it known to her that he had no intention of leaving his wife and children. For me the love of a life means someone who cannot be replaced and I have known several women, or of several women, one the fiancée of a first cousin, who never married because of the sudden death of a loved one usually in one of the two world wars.
In the instance of Piaf she married the singer Jacques Pills three years later, divorcing him four years after that and then six years later married the Greek hairdresser, singer actor Theo Sarapo in 1962, aged 26 and twenty years her junior.
There is no doubt that Edith was a passionate woman whose life continued to act out her music. In 1951 she was severely injured in a car accident involving Charles Aznavour, whose career she was also instrumental in launching. However she was also involved in two other near fatal car accidents and throughout her later life was addicted to morphine injections and continuing dependency on excessive alcohol. The film ends with her 1961 save the Olympia concert which launched Non je ne regrette rien, although she continued to work with her final Olympia concert in 1962 and final record L'homme de Berlin in April 1963. She was driven back to Paris by her husband from Grasse where she had a home, allegedly after her death. Alas the structure of the film failed to work for me and failed to communicate the extent to which she became a leading contemporary icon.

I decided to wash and shave in the midst of writing this and listened to a writer who is regarded as the most sold world wide author in the UK of books for adults as opposed to those written for children, some twenty five million, who confessed that the only thing she really liked was writing or talking about writing, and therefore disliked everything else, and only stopped when her family demanded that she given them attention. I know only too well what she meant but like Piaf I enjoy the good things of life too much to be able to just work, although nothing like her excesses. I suspect intentionally and unintentionally all three of us fuelled our myths and legends although in this we are not alone and has become the thing do if you want achieve success in the arts, become a successful politician or public personality.

I am making the time to read the Jarrow Crusade: Protest and Legend, by Matt Parry, History Lecturer at Sunderland University, Sunderland University Press 12.95; a remarkable work because of its insight into the nature of power, government at national and local level, political parties in and out of government, on the complexity of being a party politician, especially when a Minister, on the sometimes duplicitous role of trade unions and their full time politically ambitious paid leadership, on the undemocratic role of newspaper media, and its individualistic owners as organs of the establishment, influenced only by advertisers, on the blatant misuse of position by hierarchical religious leaders whose actions and statements can be shown as unchristian and unforgiving in contrast to some atheists, on the impact of sectarianism and tribalism, on the nature of protest, and above all or the nature of capitalism and work and on the different perspectives about starvation income if you are a child, or a parent who is without adequate accommodation, food, clothing and opportunity to change your circumstances

I appreciate that this says more about my interpretation of the work than its author's likely intentions although I hope to test this out with him directly when the reading is completed having read only 109 of its 264 pages to-date.
The work sets out to separate fact from fiction and explains how and why the Crusade has become more Myth and Legend, taking away attention from the other hunger marches, including one from the North East who were travelling to London at the same time.
Apart from an interest in the general issues which the work raises, I had a parallel experience of an involvement in a peace march travelling in the opposite direction only two decades later which also attempted to gain support for a cause along the route, relying on the response of local activists to also provide accommodation and food. Similar to the Jarrow march there was a control over participants but support was welcome from anyone or interest who shared its main objective. Unlike the Jarrow Crusade which emphasised its constitutional and democratic objectives the purpose of march to Holy Loch was to engage in non violent civil disobedience direct action. Two years ago, perhaps it was longer, I read a thesis about the role and effectiveness of the non violent civil disobedience Direct Action Committee (which appointed me as at temporary organiser for the Holy Loch march after I pushed the idea thought up with colleagues while doing our time in Stafford nick) and the Committee 100 which I was only asked to join after a number of original members dropped out when they realised they would be going into the front line, and which I then resigned after discovering that people were being encouraged to sign up, by Lord Russell's left hand man, or was he more right handed, who had no intention of participating in a demonstration where the committee had set a minimum number to go ahead, and where Lady Russell on behalf of her husband rejected my protest expressing their confidence in the individual. Interestingly I was not approached by the writer of the thesis. Similarly I read an article written by an expert on naval matters who claimed the authorities were able to forestall the Holy Loch demonstrators because their efforts to get hold of the plans. The facts are on behalf of the Direct Action Committee I made appointments with all the local police chiefs to advise of our intentions with varying responses. That for Clydebank appointed a liaison Inspector who asked how many men were like to be needed to facilitate the march, offering to stop the traffic rather than the usual request to limit the width and separate into blocks; for Inverclyde Greenock and Gourock under political instruction I was invited to meet three chief officers to ensure that the authority provided appropriate support while at Dunoon which covered the civil disobedience action, a meeting with the police was arranged by a local member of the national committee of the Scottish CND, and I agreed to a stenographer so that an appropriate record could be kept and which led to a letter from the Commander of the Flagship Scotland indicating that our intentions were fool hardy as well as illegal and that appropriate consequences would follow. I have it still.

How much of written history is truth and how much myth and legend depends on the perspective and interests of participants, of their written records, those of other contemporary observers and commentators and then of those who collate the available information and who then interpret against wider perspectives, personal interests and intentions.

I was interviewed by a local journalist for a national daily who admitted his brief was to do everything possible to undermine support for the project and the published piece reflected this but not his personal views and our balanced discussion, and which was different from the position of journalist of another national daily who was embedded with the marchers and proclaimed that the demonstration was a great success and would be covered throughout the world, and which it was.

One reason why I have not made as much progress with the excellent work on the Jarrow Crusade as I wanted is that I broke off to watch a programme about British Film making in relation to war. The programme had started when I switched on and over, but I managed to catch the moment when Alexander Korda is said to have persuaded Churchill not to close the cinemas because film could be used to maintain morale, gain support for the war effort and have educational and propaganda impact. He then created The Lion has Wings 1939 in order to demonstrate the different values of the UK and Nazism although aspects of the film will have unintentionally convinced the Germans of that they would have an easy victory.

"In which we serve" is loosely based on the naval life of Lord Mountbatten whose ship HMS Kelly, built at Hebburn South Tyneside, was sunk during the battle of Crete and was director debut for Noel Coward who also starred, and for David Lean, and screen acting debut for Richard Attenborough. Juliet Mills briefly appeared in the film as the fictional son of the character played by her father and Daniel Massey, playing the son of Noel Coward ,then appeared in the film Star in 1968 playing Noel Coward. The film accurately showed British society divided at that time by class and sexual biology but also emphasised the importance of everyone working together in common cause and pushing above their normal weight. It was given an honorary Oscar.

"Went the Day well" warned of the potential enemy within when a group of soldiers take over a village only to be discovered as Germans on an advance party for the invasion. The village Squire is shown to be a German spy and the village telephonist is shown killing a soldier and then being killed in a reality which is more effective than many branded horror films of today. The 49th Parallel covers a group of German submariners attempting to get home seeking the support of German emigrants in Canada but this community rejects their former countrymen because of the different values. The film was designed to encourage USA participation on the side of the British Empire and Russia.

In the "A Matter of Life and Death made immediately after the war science fiction techniques of two decades later are used to explore issues of an afterlife using a court of celestial beings in uniform, civil and military, of American UK relationships and of the comparative powerlessness of the law when confronted by selfless love. The film was the first Royal Command Performance and made at a time when millions were coping with the fact that parents, sons and daughters, loved ones would not be returning to celebrate the peace. The issue of social and nationalistic attitude is also explored in the film the Life and Death of Colonel Blimp wonderfully played by Roger Liversey who also stars in a A matter of life and Death, both films directed and produced by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, and with Anton Walbrook in the former and David Niven in the latter, or vice versa.

Although Colonel Blimp is a Low comic strip character the film script is original and commences when our hero is out smarted in a Home Guard war game in which the other team wins by refusing to play by the rules. Young Blimp wins the VC during the Boer War and then goes to Germany after receiving a request for help from an English teacher concerned about the spread of anti English propaganda, and who then marries a German officer after fighting a duel with Blimp who unintentionally insults the whole German army. In the first world war Blimp again triumphs on the premise that the Allies won because might is right. During the period he meets and marries a nurse who resembles Edith. After the war he searches for the German Officer Theo who initially snubs the overture from his former friend and after release from a POW camp returns to Germany, unrepentant. In the second world war the former German officer works in England, estranged from his children who are part of the Nazi ideological system. Colonel Blimp saves the manr from internment and the film communicates that while Blimp is still locked in his old order attitudes it is the former German officer who understands the nature of modern warfare and this is brought home to who Blimp finds that his young driver who also looks like Edith, which is not surprising as all three are played by the same actress, has given away his exercise plans to her boyfriend who leads the opposing and winning team.

Blimp and by implication the rest of old England wake up to the reality that in order to win the war the same methods as the enemy will have to be used. The role of the Home Guard was subsequently brought back into reality through the comic series Dads Army which is still shown today.

A different kind of reality was achieve with Millions Like US set in an aircraft engineering factory and hostel where called up young women from all walks of life were sent to make their contribution, which included receiving the dreaded Telegram. Post War Films like the Cruel Sea and Morning Departure, the latter where I and my cousins got some of the last seats at the back of a 4000 seat theatre in Croydon after queuing through the first feature, began to bring the reality of fighting to the general public, but we still needed hero's to help justify what had happened and Reach for the Sky, the story of Douglas Bader who returned to flying after losing both his legs and Carve her name with pride which followed the story of one young women flown into enemy territory, and who with two others were executed towards the end of the war after capture and torture .reassured about the willingness of individuals to make the ultimate sacrifice on behalf of ideals and their countrymen and countrywomen.

The continuing belief in standards and respecting the professionalism of enemy soldiers has been immortalised through another frequently repeated classic Ice Cold in Alex, now also the banner for cold lager manufacturers and where after turning in a captured enemy officer who shared their desert crossing ordeal they insist on sharing a drink with him before he is incarcerated. It was years later before adequate recognition was given to the bravery and intelligence of the enemy with the British Film The one who got away where a German flying officer who nearly gets home with an experimental plane, before being sent to Canada where he again escaped y jumping from a moving train, before getting to the USA where he was again held and escaped via Mexico back to Germany where he fought again until disappearing in a subsequent mission.

While One of our aircraft is missing 1942 showed the courage of the Dutch in helping to get home the shot down crew of an RAF Bomber, the TV series Secret Army is the master class for the role of the underground networks to return aircrew and escaped POW's to the UK to fight again just as Tenko is the benchmark for the role of women in Japanese POW camps. The classic film in relation to man under Japanese captivity is the Bridge of the River Kwai which also emphasised the dangers of sticking to values without taking account of all the implications and contemporary context. A Town Like Alice combined the heroism of British Women and that of an Australian POW with its top 100 happy endings of all time

As the 20th century progressed and new generations without any personal experience of homeland wartime came to the fore, the good and bad guy war film was questioned as well as a military hierarchy which was able to get away with anything in the name of discipline and keeping good order. The Hill is a good example of the latter, while The Bridge too far shows what happens when the planners and intelligence get it wrong. Within the space of four decades we had moved from the futility of over the top trench war with Oh What a Lovely War to the post nuclear holocaust with The War Game which the BBC commissioned and refused to show for several decades, Dr Strangelove in which one member of the Goon show, Peter Sellers played several parts onto the Bed Sitting Room which is pure Goonland Spike Milligan, and to Zulu and the Charge of the Light Brigade, in which brave young men were required to surrender their lives against overwhelming odds as historical precursors to the fields of Flanders.

Time to Leave and Jambon Jambon

I have witnessed the death of a human being twice, the first occasion I did not understand what was happening, not that I could have dome anything to save the individual given subsequent information, but I felt I ought to have been better prepared. The second, because it was premature and preventable and the subject of continuing investigation at my request, has to be for future publication.

I have never felt close to my own death in a physical sense and once when I unintentionally switched the lights off a new car going round a bend in a country lane, there was that second when I mentally prepared for pain and death, but I was calm without panic or fear. similar as when another prisoner put an arm lock around my neck, or when hosed with others in a boat on a Scottish Loch and I could not swim, there was an absence of what most will regard as "normal" feeling because of preparing myself for all eventualities, and being in what can be described as a sense of grace. I had no conscious wish to experience pain or die but accepted the possible consequences of my actions.

There have been two situations of feeling powerlessness, lonely, outside of the "normal" experience of others, bordering on despair at the circumstances, of seeing no light however flickering, and when the thought of an end briefly occurred, once just outside of teens and once in middle life, and once in later life there were the same broad situation except of feeling not outside the "normal" experience but totally within it. However on none of these occasions was the feeling of self pity and wanting to make some gesture for recognition, or of anger and wanting to hurt others, and throughout my life I have possessed the conviction that all life is important, has its own value and that to bring to an end unnaturally is wrong, any can only be justified by those authorised by a society in its self defence, or when authorised to act in the self defence of others who are not in a position to defend themselves.

During 2002 I developed a sense that before seeking new life experience I ought to re-experience my life before recording my recollection of the original experience and my contemporary response to the re-experience together with what memories remained of the original events. It was a form of preparation for my own death, but a concept and not as a physical or overwhelming reality.

Last night, Saturday 25th August 2007, I decided to view a DVD Time to Leave, provided from a list submitted to an internet club because it starred Jeanne Moreau and as there was no film release date on the sleeve, and the film title was unknown, as was the director (or so I thought), I had no sense of expectation. I was immediately engaged with emotions, and apart from one short break of a couple of minutes concentrated my being although immediately reacted adversely to the central character who has no redeeming qualities, and something which the Director explained in an interview was a key element in his concept for the film.

The film is about our reaction to being officially informed we are going to die. In this instance from medical causes and I contrasted his character and situation with that of Sophie Scholl who courageously took on her government and paid the price of her convictions being executed during World War Two for the distribution of leaflets and being part of a group who believed Nazism was wrong and unchristian.

The anti hero of Time to Leave, who could as easily have contracted AIDS from indiscriminate sex, or liver damage from excessive alcohol, or from an overdose of bad stuff, is given the news that his average expectation is three months, perhaps as little as a month, or a year, but no longer and that there was less than a five percent chance that treatment would work. Given that this is a man who appears to have no respect for his parents, behaves abominably towards his loving sister, detests her and all children, and rejects and throws out his medium term sexual partner, one begins by asking if one really cares if he survives more than a few weeks, except that it will bring grief to his parents and those who care for him despite his behaviour and outlook.

His occupation is the first clue that this is a more complex and more interesting human being. As a photographer he uses the camera as a shield against direct involvement or engagement with the feelings of others except professionally armed with a camera he can penetrate into the emotional experiences of others, although his world is the comparatively safe and socially unnecessary activity of fashion which has no value to anyone other than economic.

His first reactions are conventional, anger, frustration and denial, He wants to communicate his new situations to his lover, and his family but he does not how to break down the barrier he has created between them and instead behaves in such a way that if they were not his parents and sister, his rejection would be absolute. His solution is to go to see his grandmother, an unconventional woman, but he is able to communicate because she is old and therefore facing death, such is the arrogance of the young who think age makes a difference although admittedly death is easier to prepare yourself for if you believe that you have lived to accomplish some of the dreams and goals which you, or others, set for you. There is no evidence that how we approach the final moment of self conscious awareness is affected by our age, although it is by how we have lived and what we believe in, and what we do not. The obvious exception is when we are too young to understand that we are dying. This is an important point because the biggest single group vulnerable to an untimely and unnatural death in the UK are children under one year in their own homes. The second group, as expectedly are young men and women, although overall the number has decreased during the past decade and with the least likely group are the very old, although they are the group that tend to fear most being attacked in the street at night or in their homes.

The experience of visiting his grandmother changes how he views himself and others. She is played by Jeanne Moreau who is able to communicate all her life's experience into what is a minor part in terms of length of appearance in the film, but whose contribution is pivotal, although it also has to be said all the acting is of a superior quality in part because of the creative and artistic role of the film's Director

At the conclusion of the visit, his grandmother gives a small bunch of beautiful freshly cut flowers which becomes an emblem for the film and for his life as they commence to wither. After the visit he begin to squeeze and savour every magical wondrous moment of life. He also begins to make peace with others, with varying degrees of success and in so doing he begins to make peace with himself. There is one situation which in less sensitive hands could easily have degenerated into soft porn and which instead becomes a beautiful and magnificent affirmation of life and its continuity after individual death. The film ends in a beautiful and imaginative way.

Sometimes after an important experience, there is need to digest by doing something different, or digesting, savouring the feelings aroused blocking out fresh experience. Tonight I examined what else was on the DVD and this was such a good decision because of 90 minutes of the director talking in English about his life and work, a documentary about the film creativity, and some deleted scenes, each additional segment enriching the experience. It was only after checking out Director Francois Ozon's flimography I found that in 2001 and 2003, I enjoyed two other of his films, 8 Women at Bolden UGC (after some moronic teenagers had left after grasping that the film was in French with subtitles, and The Swimming Pool also at a UGC but on this occasion in London during a visit to see my mother. I may have viewed others, but the Swimming Pool remains vivid as do some images from 8 Women, Time to Leave was made in 2005. I will make the effort to view all his films because what he has to say and the way he says it is of great importance to me.

The artistic nature of photography and how to handle potentially controversial subjects was the point of a made for TV True story on Satellite TV earlier in the week. The court Room drama, Dirty Pictures tells what happened when Dennis Barrie (James Woods) director of the Cincinnati Contemporary Arts Centre booked an exhibition of photographs by Robert Mapplethorpe after the work had been cancelled by the Washington Corcoran Gallery because of controversy surrounding the inclusion two photographs of naked children and of adult sexual acts involving sado-masochism and homosexuality. A local jury dismissed both sets of charges despite a biased judge, a fanatical public prosecutor, the evident abuse and misuse of legal proceedings and the abuse, and attempted blackmail and bribery of the Director and his family. A reviewer gives the film seven out of ten because of its bravery in tackling the subject in an equally explicit and challenging way showing the photographs as a part of the full exhibition work with the end credits. I was less enthusiastic, because the judge and the prosecutor and their witnesses were portrayed as one dimensional beings, whereas Barrie and his family were allowed more rounded personalities, full of contradictions and conflicting interests. The film also used real people clips such as Salmon Rushdie, who says, "If you cannot defend what to you is unpalatable, then you do not believe in free speech. You only believe in free speech for those who agree with you." The boy in one of the two photos was also interviewed, when a young man, to express that he had enjoyed being photographed with parental approval and that the public showing of the photograph had not affected his life. I imagine the outcome of the case would be very different to-day, not because of the adult images which have become common place in contemporary art galleries and art publications around the world, but because of our knowledge about the misuse of photographing nude children and then exhibiting pictures over the internet. When I was a boy every barber shop had a few well thumbed copies of Health and Beauty, or some similar title which featured naked families as well as National Geographic which featured those of different lands and skin colours.

There is no doubt that child and adult porn has influenced some individuals to commit depraved acts which cause lifetime damage to the victims used to create the images and films. However societies everywhere should be as concerned about the explosion of violent internet, TV and console games and films which extol psychopathic behaviour, behaviour in which individuals are killed without emotion because they are regarded the enemy or obstacles. I am disappointed but not surprised that Gordon's Brown's government has reacted in the way as Tony's following the tragic death on a football man eleven year old in Liverpool, returning home from playing with friends. More attempted crowd pleasing gesture which will prove as inconsequential as others of a similar nature. Thirty years ago I started to draw attention that leaving Liverpool one Winter's evening in a convoy after watching my time suffer defeat at Everton, hundreds of children and adolescents in groups of three to six had appeared from behind cars and walls and pelted the coaches for several miles as we left the city heading north for the M6, breaking windows. It was evident this was a cultural sport ignored by the police and parents in the city. Fifteen years later I made a visit to the city as a professional adviser to the local government Drugs Forum when drug gang culture was moving downwards from young adults to teenage school children and considerable energy and funding was being directed into redesigning housing developments and facilities for young people at the same time as local authority accountants under Treasury financial dictatorship were encouraging the sale of school playing fields and general education was switching away from teaching life skills to passing examination in subjects which were to be of little value to the majority after school leaving. In the last decade we have seen the dramatic growth in gambling shops, tanning parlours, and youth centred drinking facilities in every high street town centre. Cheap alcohol is also available in vast quantity at every supermarket outlet and older brothers and some parents are only too willing to supply those who in their early teens. My mother and her sister lived in a small block of flats and the teenage mother in the same block was seen doing this on several occasions to her friends and their younger brothers and sisters. Every day a child is killed somewhere on our roads and there is no mention, and every day hundred of children die unnecessarily somewhere from starvation and disease.

My other film this week was Bigas Luna's Jamon Jamon, the 1992 film in which the physical charms of Penelope Cruz first came to international attention. At the end of the film two men attempt to batter each other, one successfully, with legs of ham. The film is a comic portrayal of Spain after Franco in much the same vein as Almodovar in which the bar running mother of Ms Cruz educates the boyfriend fiancée who wishes to become a bullfighter as she has his father in the past, while the father has a yen for the daughter who has been made pregnant by his son, but who has a yen for a stud who is paid by the wife to seduce the girl when she does not know the girl is pregnant but who then takes the stud as her lover.

For some incomprehensible reason foreigners, including the British tend to regard the paella as the national dish of Spain. I am supplied by Spanish goodies by Delicioso.co.uk where it is possible to purchase an authentic Jambon from £75 7 Kg's and cured over 16 months to £399 for 8 Kg's cured over 36 months. 100 grams of a quality cut is available for £9.25. The traditional way to create these hams is to roll the leg in salt on a table called saladero and leave for several weeks. The salt is then carefully washed away and hung on rafters to cure or dry with the minimum amount of salt so as to make the meat taste sweet, The ideal location for the hanging is an open windowed room to allow the cold winter air to blow throw although today most are factory produced and a left to cure in special cold stores, as in the film. It reported that a proportion of the hams fail to cure properly but for the rest they are said to spice up the natural passions. The average Spaniard will find Jamon Jamon fun until the ending which will be regarded as a sacrilegious misuse of hams. Death has many faces but it is something we all experience.