Classic Film Review: Kitty Foyle (1940)

Ginger Rogers won an Oscar for her portrayal of Kitty in this film and I'm not surprised. It's subtitled 'The Natural History of a Woman' and is based on an 1939 novel by Christopher Morley. The script was slightly sanitised; Rogers was apparently reluctant to play the sexually explicit character of the book who has an abortion. Nevertheless, the character remains a strong one and Rogers's performance is wonderful.

The story opens with Kitty receiving a marriage proposal from Mark, a doctor. She accepts him and rushes home to pack, only to find an old (and now married) flame, Wyn, waiting for her. She ends up telling Wyn she'll meet him at the same time she's supposed to be meeting Mark. As she packs she thinks back on her relationships with both Wyn and then Mark to decide who she should choose. Wyn was the first man she fell in love with but his Philadelphia family was far too wealthy to accept her while Mark is a man who tricks her into a first date and then plays cards at her apartment because he can't afford to take her out.

I found myself shouting 'pick the doctor' at this from the very beginning, whilst still being pretty unsure who she'd pick or whether she'd pick at all. Rogers surprised me in this very emotional role, playing both a sassy woman who won't take any rubbish and a vulnerable one who is open to being hurt. There's one heartbreaking scene where the director keeps the camera on Rogers's face while she receives some terrible news: the subtlety of her performance is painful to watch but it was completely the right choice. In fact, the whole thing was artistically shot (even the opening segment that showed the progression of woman since emancipation in a silent film format) and the script was fairly sound. Even the characters who only had a few scenes were memorable, especially Kitty's two flatmates who put cream on their faces to try and intimidate Mark into leaving the apartment on his first date with Kitty. Although Rogers was clearly the star, there was a ensemble feel to it, with every character being portrayed wonderfully. I don't think they could have gathered a better cast together.

The story didn't unfold as I thought it would but that was rather a pleasant surprise. I can't find much bad to say about this one. Ginger Rogers certainly deserved her Oscar!

Don't Read - You're Too Old!

Since she moved into the sheltered accommodation my grandmother has been complaining of boredom. She still does the crossword every day and watches a bit of television but, for the most part, she sits all day looking out of the window. She used to read years ago but she doesn't these days. Me and my father decided to pick her up a cheap book and just see if she liked it. We took it to her and she didn't look too enthusiastic but we left it there anyway.

The next day she was visited by her daughter ('dismissive daughter' would be an appropriate descriptive term). The daughter stuck her nose up at the book, saying that she doesn't want to start reading a book and she'd be better off with short stories. I think I went a funny colour when this was relayed back to me. This is a woman who has been reading for a good eighty years. How patronising can you get? Is there a cut-off point whereby people just think the elderly regress back to being children? I'm amazed she didn't suggest picture-books or pop-ups. Is it any wonder older people feel so unwanted when we treat them like little more than pets to be admonished and dictated to?

However, I did appreciate my grandmother's reaction to being told she should read short stories. The next day she picked up the novel and started reading - and then found she couldn't put it down. It was a wartime romance (I avoided anything with tragic themes when I was picking it out) and apparently she loves it. I feel rather smug. Then again, who doesn't appreciate being right?

Book Review: Trumpet by Jackie Kay

The premise of Trumpet fascinated me when I picked it up in the bookshop. Joss Moody, famous jazz trumpeter, has revealed a huge secret on his death - he was actually a woman living as a man. His wife, Millie, has taken herself off to a village in Scotland to get away from the prying eyes and gossips but their adopted son, Colman, is left in London to deal with the fallout.

I really enjoyed the first few chapters of this. The first lengthy chapter is told from Millie's perspective, flicking back and forth between the present and past as she struggles with her grief. It's a poignant portrait of sorrow and love, serving to remind the reader that things aren't always black and white. Interspersed with the 'real' narrative are chapters that look at proceedings from people who deal with the aftermath of the lie - the doctor, the funeral director, the registrar. I liked those three chapters and I liked Millie's chapters. What I disliked, however, were the chapters that focused on Colman, Sophie the journalist who has talked him into a book, and the small bitty chapters that look at people on the periphery of Moody's life. I understand that Kay wanted to portray how the lie affected everybody associated with Moody but the result is a little too disjointed for my tastes. That said, none of the chapters are badly-written and all are evocative in one way or another.

Colman, though, is a thoroughly irritating character. In all honesty, his masturbation scene was certainly something I could've lived without reading. He's not just being an idiot due to the lie, both he and his mother freely admit to themselves that he's been that way all his life. His pact with journalist Sophie seems completely in character for him. As for Sophie herself, I think she was caught between being a stereotypical journalist (the implications of which are even more repugnant now than they were in 1998) and Kay trying to portray her as something more. I honestly don't think the exposition regarding Sophie was necessary and the chapters in her viewpoint felt a little redundant. 

As you can tell, I had mixed feelings about this one. Very well-written, very human and very descriptive. Kay's poetic tendencies certainly shine through in the prose. However, my enjoyment was marred by the difficulty in keeping up with where you were in each chapter. I'd still recommend it, though, mainly for the sensitive treatment of the subject matter.

Love On Coronation Street

I don't often drift into Coronation Street philosophising on here but bear with me for one post. There's something niggling me about one of the storylines - and I bet it's not the one you think either.

I love Rita Sullivan. Definite Corrie legend and one of those characters who you feel deserves a bit of happiness. After all, she's had two husbands die on her, been pursued by a madman through the streets of Blackpool and had a tram dropped on her head: let her enjoy a few years of peace, eh? Well, the producers may have had a similar notion (I say 'may' with deliberate cautiousness because this is Corrie, after all). Rita has just become engaged to Dennis Tanner, following a year of friendship that always implied it would become something more. Now, I love Dennis as much as I love Rita. He's a neat link to a bit of Coronation Street history and he's a funny character, always having a pop at Norris in The Kabin. Ah, there lies the problem - Norris.

Quite a while ago - in a post about longing - I suggested that I wanted Rita and Norris to settle into a happy retirement strangling each other. Part of me still does. I'm torn between enjoying the couple actually on screen and wishing that irritating curmudgeon Norris would get the woman he so clearly loves. My prevailing memory of the tram crash isn't linked to a death but is Norris plainly saying 'all I care about is you' when Rita's brought out of the rubble. But now Norris is trying to hide his emotions under a thick layer of sarcasm as Rita and Dennis celebrate their engagement. I just find the situation difficult to watch! How can you like two couples with equal weight? And, more to the point, how can the engagement of a pair of pensioners be trumping the drama of murders, affairs and family meltdowns for me? I really am a funny one. And I'm looking forward to the wedding.

One final point about the engagement episode - I was really impressed with the script and the whole 'where were you when JFK was shot' conversation. Set aside from the mayhem of the current murder plot, the party was a gentle reminder of Corrie's comic capabilities, a hat tip towards its past and a demonstration that wonderful characters can still be sensitively written. It's odd the things that I look for in my soap viewing.

 

Classic Film Review: Jane Eyre (1943)

I became interested in Joan Fontaine after watching her with Fred Astaire in A Damsel in Distress (1937). To put it bluntly, I was bewitched. When I saw that she was in Jane Eyre opposite Orson Welles I was fairly excited.

The film does have the melodramatic feel of the era but also manages to recreate some of the foreboding atmosphere of Lowood and Thornfield. Fontaine - despite her beauty - makes a very good plain Jane because they don't glamorise her as much as I feared they would. As for Welles as Mr Rochester... Well, that was just an excellent bit of casting. He's got the presence of Rochester, the humour lingering beneath the surface and I felt he had real chemistry with Fontaine. The supporting cast was pretty good as well: Margaret O'Brien's pre-Meet Me in St. Louis (1944) French accent as young Adele was much better than I expected, though I'm not a huge fan of her. Agnes Moorehead was the perfect Mrs Reed while Henry Daniell played the terrible Mr Brocklehurst to perfection. The plot is slimmed down from the book and misses out some interesting scenes (I'm assuming Orson Welles wasn't keen on dressing up like a gypsy). Nevertheless, this was a good adaptation and one that never pretended to be more than the entertainment it was.

If I had to pick one favourite scene it would probably be Rochester's horse being spooked by Jane on the moors. Wonderfully shot and a nice precursor to the movement of their relationship. All in all, thoroughly enjoyable and, yes, my obsession with Joan Fontaine is growing.

Book Review: The Help by Kathryn Stockett

Sometimes when a book is given as much attention as The Help has been I grow wary, wondering if it'll live up to the hype. I was the same with Wolf Hall. Fortunately, this proved to be as good as they said it was. I can see why it's a best-seller and I can see why the recent film was so popular. I can't wait to see that.

The Help tells the story of a small town in Mississippi and focuses on three women within it - black maids Aibileen and Minny and Skeeter, the white daughter of a fairly standard family. Aibileen is something of a child specialist, raising her seventeenth white child and trying to instil some colour-blind principles into her charge. Minny is tough-as-nails with a propensity to shoot her mouth off. Skeeter had a fantastic childhood relationship with her own maid and comes home from college to find her gone with no explanation. Skeeter begins to notice the arbitrary lines between white and black and comes up with a plan to interview maids and get their perspectives written down and put into a book.

The novel flicks between the three viewpoints for the most part. Chapter twenty-five deviates from this as it describes a scene that none of the viewpoint characters could have viably reported on. It was worth the slight jolt from the fictional world to get a full overview of that scene. The dialect of Aibileen and Minny is easy to get used to but certainly sounds authentic while Skeeter's chapters display the impetuousness and uncertainty of an intelligent woman trying to find her place in the world. There are many strands running through the novel - Skeeter's burgeoning relationship with Stuart, Minny's odd relationship with her new boss, Aibileen's touching moments with her young charge - but it doesn't feel overpopulated. It all matters in the end because every event and encounter feeds into the characters.

There were so many aspects of The Help that I loved (and so many characters I wanted to wallop). Stockett doesn't shy away from showing the downright terrible alongside the touching moments. Hilly Holbrook is technically the villain of the piece, a woman so disgusted with black people that she starts an initiative to have outside toilets built for the maids so they don't have to share with the white population. Hilly is all about barriers and keeping her place at the helm of...well, everything. Her punishment is extremely fitting and will get you laughing and cringing at the same time.

I suppose the run-up to the climax of the novel is absurd, but not in the way that it's illogical. It's absurd because it builds on everything we've come to learn about the characters and depends entirely on those characters being true to form. It's absurd because I felt as though I should've seen it coming - but I didn't. I'm not usually one for visible reactions to whatever I'm reading but one moment in The Help had me clapping my hand over my mouth in public and generally looking mad. That's an endorsement if ever there was one.

The Significance of a Key

Having read Angela Barton's poignant post about grief, I began thinking about the odd things human beings do/say/keep in the name of preserving a memory. Mine borders on theft, I'm afraid, but I'm certain the council changed the locks when they renovated the house...

Anyway, my maternal grandmother lived in a small but character-laden house on a council estate. I say character-laden because it reflected... I don't know what it reflected actually but it was certainly a special house. The kitchen was a hideous (I have to admit it) shade of yellow; the sideboard in the living room had a cupboard full of odds and ends (when we cleared it out we found a decade old bottle of medicine); the carpet had a square gap located conveniently underneath the sofa; the wallpaper on the far wall didn't quite dip below the long television stand; there was ant powder in the corners; the furniture in my bedroom came from the neighbour across the street who married a nice man and lied about her debts... Once you open the door to one memory a host of others follow. It's incredible how responsive the mind is to a theme tune or a smell or an overheard phrase.

My grandmother was the giving type. She used to buy me presents all the time, even though some of them were a little eccentric. She brought me a doll back from her first-foreign holiday (which my sister promptly smashed - not out of spite, I hasten to add); she bought me CDs from my favourite seller on the market (Eartha Kitt, Rose Marie); she brought me back a keyring with my name on it from her last holiday in Blackpool. I clipped that onto my keys the day she gave it to me and only reluctantly took it off when it became likely it would disintegrate if I didn't. I still have it. However, there is one thing of hers I still carry around with me to this day: her house key.

It's a clunky thing, one of the long types that opens a 'proper' door to my way of thinking. It's in remarkable condition (unlike her own in the end) because she had it cut especially for me when I was in college. I remember the occasion that prompted it: she was taken out for a meal by one of her sisters and I arrived after college, as I did every day. I sat in the garden reading Antony and Cleopatra for my English Literature class while the neighbour came out periodically to check I didn't need to use their facilities. I really did need a key considering the amount of time I spent around there.

When she moved from her home of fifty years to sheltered accommodation (then it was a short time to the home and then...) I didn't think about the key. I was too caught-up doing what needed to be done and stripping my grandmother's house of its life. I remember standing in the almost-empty house and wanting to cry at how easily the past had been erased. No plates on the wall, no brass figures on the mantlepiece, no vase with fake petals in the bottom that was in need of a clean. It was more than just empty, it was dead. When I finally realised that I had the house key on my keyring it was too late to give it back. But, on those days I do believe in some kind of fate, I think it was meant to be that way. Now I have a permanent reminder of my grandmother on my person at all times. More than that, though, I have a permanent record of how much she trusted me and how much we meant to each other. That's pretty special for a key.

Me and my grandmother at Bournemouth in 2005: