This issue: apologies; film studies starts; Imperial London; Jack the Ripper; the Kray twins; OK, nice Mr doctor, I'll get back in the van with the men in white suits now...

Firstly, I'm sorry for the continued mess this blog is in. Mending it is going to take some time, time I don't have until at least next week. It's horrible, but you'll have to live with it.

This blog is a long one, so I have split it into six parts. Parts I-III are film related, going from the anecdotal to the academic. Part IV details the arrival of my serial killer swap, Part V is a review of a movie, and Part VI goes back to the anecdotal again.

PART I - film studies!
Film started this morning, and its already a lot of fun. Our lecturer is the KCL Terry Jones - delightfully camp, infectiously enthusiastic and with one of those faces that would have better graced a chainmail and tabard. Do you know the type? Sometimes I see men (women too occasionally) whose faces seem to suggest another era. There's one in my class with a ruddy red beard, who looks strangely lost in indie-kid apparel: he deserves a hauberk and horn of mead.

This term I'm doing British National cinema - focusing in particular on London as a space, which sounds pretentious until you realise it's EXACTLY what I've been doing for the last year. Monthly visits to Butlers Wharf (because of Doctor Who). Plans to watch the sun come up from Tower Bridge (to confirm which direction). Taking off my hat as I pass the Marquis of Granby, taking five minute detours to walk via Henrietta Street instead of cutting straight across Covent Garden, grinning like an idiot on book-paradise-lane or Temple Bar. Not because Dirk Bogarde was there, but because Melvin Farr the character was. I've a fictional map laid over the actual city. If it ever gets sufficiently detailed, I may draw it.

I'm trying to wrestle it into a mythology - five or six primal forces which have shaped the city. I've got a handle on one or two, others I am aware of but don't "know" well enough to define. This course: all about that, and has already helped me with characterising Empress London (who is possibly the mother of the Prince of Dark London, the illegitimate child she won't admit to in public but one who is willing to blackmail her with the fact at any point. She pays him off to keep out of the way...). And it ends with a free-choice essay on any aspect of British cinema. Folks, I think my rant about Jack the Ripper as London is gonna see the light of day and get me some marks!

Today we played "getting to know you" - talking time, then you have to introduce your partner. Very funny, as we all droned "hi Mike..." in the conscious manner of a self-help group after introduction. Favourite British film? I pitched for Guns of Navarone, but hastily added Matter of Life and Death, Brief Encounter and The Third Man when I sensed I was being sneered at. And indeed, when my partner introduced me, he qualified "her favourite film is..." by adding I was a David Niven fan and suggesting some other more respectible entries. In a nice manner, I hasten to add, as if to save my pride in public - but it was still noteworthy. He liked Matter of Life and Death, so is obviously a sane individual. Why are you doing this module? We both agreed: mutual London obsessions. Preconceptions about British cinema? None for him - I, however, expressed my adoration for the stiff upper lip. And my gripping worry ever since the course had started that we'd end up doing dour kitchen sink dramas (no fear there: "they're awful!" pronounced our lecturer.) We also agreed that film was ideally escapism.

The highlight was Lecturer doing the register for the first time: Sarah Lea? It's Lee, not Leah. Mary Kate? I just go by Kate. So far, so normal. Tyler? "Present," the man himself replied, "I go by Jack."

Part of me really hopes this is part of an elaborate Fight Club devotion.

PART II - lecture one, cinematic London
Much of the first lecture was about "Empress London" and "Dark London" - those are my terms, he called them "Imperial London" and "London as Labyrinth", but it's clearly the same ideas. We talked about "cultural coordinates" - the East End was where the docks were, because London was built on a river, so that where the dock workers lived, so that's also where the poverty is. And Eastenders still evokes that working class mileu in a way Notting Hill, say, in West London doesn't. The city was revamped precicely because it was the heart of an Empire - in the 1870s, the Embankment was built to get rid of the smell, with the circle line built into it. It never occured to me that before, the Thames was a far wider river, starting from mudflats and shallows. That's why so many of the Kings waterfront buildings are a jumble of basements. Apparently, in the Savoy Guardens near Charing Cross there is an ancient river gate: I'm so going to find it.

The city's rebuilding was an act of imperial development, to represent the Empire and create literal public spaces remodelled specifically to be appropriate for ceremony. It's no surprise that this was the NeoClassical era - it reminds me of how the Romans laid out their cities. The Mall, Regents Street, Admiralty Arch were all built ahead of Edward VII's coronation precicely to create the backdrop of regality - it was also in this era that the English and the monarchy were thought of as closely interlinked. We talked about the symbolism of roads - Fleet Street and the Strand, for example, linking the economic "city" with Westminster and the political; or Nelson's column lining up with Big Ben down Whitehall. It all screams empire. Kingsway, my route to uni, is a huge avenue of trees and Georgian buildings with the gloriously regal Bush House, pictured. As if to confirm how Empress London attempts to brush the Dark Prince under the carpet, Bush House and Kingsway (oh, clue's in the name there...) stand on the site of Holywell Street - a poky , slummy alleyway famous for selling porn. It's very much what is being done to poor Soho as we speak - being redeveloped so London can show off during the Olympics.

PART III - Brit cinema academia
I've been enjoying the academia too. The first piece we read begins by trashing British Cinema with pithy quotes from everyone throughout time:

"I do not think the British are temperamentally equipped to make the best use of the movie camera" ~ great Indian director Satyajit Ray

"a certain incompatability between the terms "cinema" and Britain"" ~great French director Truffaut

"the English can write and they can act (or at least speak beautifully, which is enough to cripple us with admiration), but they can't direct movies...English films have always been a sad joke" ~ critic Pauline Kael

"The British douse their movies with close-ups the way people defective taste-buds use ketchup - they're not a very visual race" ~ Dwight Macdonald, American critic

"It is one of the curiosities of film history that American films, when they seem to change with the passing of years, become either better or worse; while on re-examination British films, if they change at all, only become worse" ~ David Shipman, academic

"its achievement is so limited and so much less interesting than that of other countries" ~ Wood, academic

"The British cinema is as dead as it was before. Perhaps it was never alive." ~ Perkins, critic

Oh. Bastards. The essay doesn't seek to refute the position, but instead explore why these ideas are around. One thing it picks up on is fascinating.

"the camera forces one to face facts, to probe, to reveal, to get close to people and things; while the British nature inclines to the opposite; to stay aloof, to cloak harsh truths with innuendoes. You cannot make great films if you suffer from constricting inhibitions of this sort."

That's Satyajit Ray again, and he is right, dammit, so g'darn right. I'm not sure I should be supporting ideas like "national temperament", but suddenly a lot of things have fallen into place. I assumed this stoicism wasn't general - just the ones I hunted down because fictional repression floats my boat. But it explains lots of other things: like sarcasm, the British humour, which consists of an absence. When Avon drawls:

"Law breakers, law makers - let's fight them all. Why not."

What he's actually saying is "oh God, I want to go home". In other words, sarcasm is an act of drawing attention to something not said. And maybe this also explains the British attraction to social realism. I studied it last year, and one of its tropes (both narrative and stylistic) is "proximity, not sympathy". Most films give you a hero - This is Bob. Bob is your hero, and a Good Guy. Sympathise with Bob. Hope he wins - while social realism presents characters instead: Bob is a plumber on the dole. Watch Bob as he goes around his daily life. What do you think about him? And this is backed by the style: Classical Hollywood cinema uses a lot of close ups, while social realism prefers handheld tracking shots that follow the characters but don't focus on them. In other words, natural for a repressed cinema which avoids sympathy. Later in the essay, the author suggests the British turned to documentary as "part of a legitimate process of dehumanisation", and that wartime cinema did so well precicely because it "validated...those qualities of restraint and stoicism which might previously have appeared insipied". Another critic mentions that "while British films avoid erotic themes, many of them deal very movingly wiht its frustration, or tepidity or absence".

Ray continues:

"What is more, the placidity and monotony of habit patterns that mark the British way of life are the exact opposite of what consitutes real meat for the cinema. The cinema revels in contrasts and clashes - however small and subtle. The calm has to be ruffled, the patterns disturbed and tensions created - and these have to be revealed in audible speech and visible action, to provide the basic raw material for the director to work upon. They were lacking in the British scene."

I agree with this less; rather, while I agree with it, I don't apply it to British cinema. The contrasts and clashes are there, and more powerful for being imperceptable. All drama consists of breaking predictable patterns, and with the exception of kitchen sink's soggy flannel meandering, British cinema does this very well. For example, the essay lists five classic war movies in which "choking back or snapping out of grief for the dath of a loved one becomes a central and very moving motif". The fact these characters don't react when we know they should draws attention to depth of emotion. It does not tally with our own understainding of grief, and the unexpectedness of the reaction draws more attention to it. Like what they always say about Ozu.

And anyway, "the moment when the mask cracks" perhaps defines what I love in cinema more than anything else. That only works if the character has been unimpeachably stoic beforehand (i.e. Victim <3). style="font-style: italic;">A Matter of Life and Death as opposites with Brief Encounter - one as realism, one as magical. Which I suppose is true, but I've always carried them in the same box, watching them in turns as so not to watch either to death. And the essay actually discusses Carrington VC, a forgettable film I'm now glad I've seen. After all, it's OK really: it had David Niven in it...

PART IV - serial killer swap

While talking about "Saucy Jack", I got my cards for the Serial Killer swap. The letter sent with them is a swap-bot classic. It's decorated with birds and flowers, and written with a loopy girly handwriting, with circles over the "i"s instead of dots.

Hi! I hope you enjoy these cards for the ATC SERIAL KILLER SWAP.
Jack the Ripper! [double underlined - exclamation mark - then a cute smiley face]
I had so much fun making them!
Thanks
[big happy heart] [name of sender]

Inside were some craft papers in pretty colours, and a sticker sheet with cuddly monsters on it. I'm not sure whether to be disappointed or relieved. I'm definitely amused, which was perhaps the aim of the game - and the cards are nice, though I feel a little dirty for having them about.

PART V - "The Krays"(1990) - review

Mind you, while we're talking bad taste, lets talk about the Kray brothers. Spirita has friends with fantastic stories all over the place, including a guard who used to know the Krays. I get third hand anecdotes every now and then, which supplements the wealth of Kray knowledge I've gained, um, purely from the Monty Python parody (Dinsdale!)

I pointed out that I had a copy of The Krays on video, which I'd bought in a flurry at the end of last term - along with An Affair to Remember, Yellow Submarine and From Hell. They covered all my potential bases - something classic, something daft, something Victorian and something with elegantly suited chaps getting covered in gore. We watched it with some enthusiasm, and it frankly wasn't very good.

What was with the pseudomysticism? The film begins and ends with a "mysterious dream" from the protagonists' mom. Another moment sees them chorus "last night we had the same dream" in creepy kid-twin voices, before revealing something cod-significant. Crocodiles are used as a metaphor for something - when Lovestruck!Kray gives a crocodile brooch to the future Mrs Kray, the dialogue runs as follows:

"I don't like it! What if it hurts me?"
"It'll never hurt you."

Um. OK. Get that juicy metaphor! Mum spends the first half saying things like "oh, my little monsters!" in a supposed-to-be-ironic way. I know they liked their ole' mum, but she was an irritating stock character: the hardworn battleaxe, who does all the work while all the men are layabouts, dishing out wisdom and "I raised them I did! I've always tried to my best for them!" home-manufactured lines." When they grow up, the plot remains interrupted by kitchen sink digressions focusing on the world of women. Here is one character's misty-eyed eulogy, just before she dies out of the blue for no discernable reason:

"I was on the bus the other day. And some old toerag was boasting about all he'd suffered during the war. Stupid old... I tell you, they don't know. It was the women who had the war - the real war. The women were left at home in the shit, not sitting in some sparkling plane or gleaming tank. There's no glamour for us...Men! Mum's right. They stay kids all their f-g lives. And they end up heroes - or monsters. Either way they win. Women have to grow up. If they stay children, they become victims. "

*dies*

There's nothing wrong with putting the Krays in a social context - in fact, it lifts the film out of being a cheap gangster romp - but only if it actually contributed to psychological depth. As it stands, it's as if the dull bits of Eastenders were intercut with amateur theatre's Reservoir Dogs. It is honestly not because social realism bores me and I wanted to get back to the killing. It felt very disjointed, a little like when Homer stops talking about a battle to go on a one-page simile about how a hero hits someone ("like a boar who...") which is a set piece in its own right. It was rather like interrupting Hamlet so that Falstaff could speak. Modern cinema does not do soliloquies, and when it does, please make it relevant..?

And that's just one instance of disjointed-ness. Characters drift in and out on the assumption we know who they are (what did Jack the Hat do again...?); the scene in which the brothers ultimately kill a named character on screen is presented as a watershed moment (as if Chelsea smiles and multiple mutilations are "OK"...); the psychological depth is more like a puddle. In the army they meet someone who says "did you know some people threaten other people for cash?", and then bam when they come out, they're criminal.

In fact it's appalling, but that's fine - I didn't buy it for art. I have different needs, and one of them is occasionally cold bloody brutality. Most of the time I genuinely enjoy films, which just happen to have violent themes as a byproduct, but sometimes I do just need a fix. The Krays was at times unwatcheably vicious, which I suppose is appropriate, so I was pretty satisfied.

And there were some good bits. It was cute when Mum!Kray interrupted one of their business meetings to bring up tea, and ask who'd trod mud into the house, and all their gangster mates suddenly fawned and checked their shoes. I also liked the moment the brothers got threatened by a bunch of unsuspecting heavies in a club, and whipped out swords. Now that's style...

And trivia: the leads were played by the Kemp brothers from Spandau Ballet.

PART VI - Gangflat terror

Both Spirita and I have come to worry about the fact we're not very threatening, so we've decided to take some management tips from the Krays. She's going to be Reggie, and I'm going to be Robbie, and we're going to try it out this evening when we meet our prospective new housemate.

We've decided that when Calypso opens the door and welcomes him in, we are goung to saunter threateningly down the stairs and intimidate him over the bannisters. I'm going to be chewing gum, and she's going to tread on a cigarette Clint-style. We've been practicing our cold, dead gangster eyes, twinchronicity, and how to shake someone's hand in a gangster-ly manner; also, we had a go at a "hit" - which was marvellous fun. That's the last time any of the kitchenware dares disrespect us like that loaf of bread did...it's sleeping with the recyclable egg cartons. Spirita's new nickname is "Eve the Hat", because she doesn't wear hats. We don't dress quite dapper enough, however we are going to try for Kray-hair.

When my sister was here for interviews, she flew into a panic one morning about having the wrong hair gel, phoned me up then woke Spirita to let her out of the house so she could go buy something better. Net result: an unwanted tub of man's hair gel in my cupboard (apparently, man gel is just "different"; I'm a little dubious about this). This actually makes me ludicrously happy - a surprising number of my style icons/lust objects have slicked back hair:

(or is it just suits? Also, I sort of want to see this show now. Cooper and Newandyke Investigate? Makes most logical sense, but it's not so much fun if Michael's the bad guy. Dale is the uptight one, Freddie's the bad boy and ladies' man, and maybe Michael is the uncompromising boss. Hey, I've got it! Maybe they're working for him, but increasingly start investigating him too as his true agenda comes clear...? Also, I am really overthinking this. I'll just crawl back to Livejournal now...)

In fact, perhaps we should get Calypso to pay us "protection" in case, y'know, her bedroom should be "accidentally" destroyed? Though maybe she should bring us tea and biscuits instead.

Why no, this is not tasteless in the least...