QUEEN LEAR- AT THE MTC

                      



IN Queen Lear, currently playing at the MTC around the corner from the National Gallery, Robyn Nevin is the matriarch, instead of your usual patriarch in Shakespeare’s play. I’m not sure why the gender has changed, except to say that if the celebrated Robyn Nevin wants to tackle the great Lear, then she should, and being female should not be an impediment.

I saw a modernised version of King Lear several years ago with Frank Gallaher in the title role. He gave it everything, and it wasn’t his fault it was awful. Someone in their infinite wisdom thought it would be trendy to modernise it, and we got metropolis where there might be blasted heath, and a car on the stage, culprits being fingerprinted and mobile phones incongruously sticking out of people’s pockets.

So it was with some relief that this time I saw the blasted heath being replicated, and everything more or less pared back- not too muck trickery, nice and simple and relying on that beautiful, rich and evocative language.

I guess it was a bit disconcerting at first to see a queen when once there was a king, getting ready to retire, and looking forward to the easy life, living with her favoured daughter, and drinking champagne after the division of her kingdom. The three daughters of the queen looked on, expectantly. None of them overly impressed during the course of the play. For all its gender shifting, besides Nevin, it was the men who stole the play. Richard Piper, as Gloucester, was, like Lear, cocky and unsuspecting at first, and then convincing as the poor man brutalised by cruel, cruel people. In the printed version, the plucking of grey hairs from his beard by Goneril is truly shocking, and this wasn’t done to maximum effect, but the removal of his eyes more than made up for it, with the gut wrenching issuing of blood.

Kent, played by Robert Menzies, was mesmerising. He is a terrific actor. I saw him many years ago playing Hamlet, and he features as a blind man in ‘Cactus’, one of Paul Cox’s best films. I don’t know if his career has properly kicked on or not- does he enjoy making these local plays?- but he has always deserved attention.

Edmund began convincingly, but his role as the bastard son seemed to diminish, and the menace he provides in the play dissipated somewhat, overshadowed by the adoring daughters. His thirst for recognition from his careless father is a great aspect of the play- ‘there was great sport at his making.’

Edgar likewise diminished in stature. He appears on a bicycle at the start, which was unnecessary, and he was serviceable as the wary and gullible son, very good as ‘Poor Tom’, and then dull in the last thirty minutes or so around the time he answers the herald. The knife scene with Edgar was overlong and clunky. He seemed to me to lose energy, like he was going through his paces.

Oswald was suitably stupid, Albany was inexplicably in a wheelchair, and Cornwall was callous and efficient in his dealings with Gloucester. The men were, overall, by far the most interesting people, in a play in which the daughters are so crucial, and the main man has been turned into a woman.

Having said that, Robyn Nevin more than held her own. Over confident and arrogant at the start, she did need pulling back a little, as Kent unsuccessfully tried to do. Her madness was equally convincing. Her hair was tatty and had turned white, and there was pathos in how diminished her role had become as she languished in the storm and chose frightful partners in Poor Tom and the disguised Kent.

Regan was the best of the daughters. Her hair was slicked back tightly, her features severe, tall, thin and calculated, she had trouble written all over her stern countenance. Goneril was more womanly, less severe, but hardly maternal in her dealings with her ageing mother. She, with Albany, certainly had the nicer of the two husbands.

The biggest letdown for me, for the whole play- and she has been mercilessly castigated by some critics- was Cordelia, just about my favourite female character, along with Kitty in Anna Karenina, in all of literature. Cordelia, in the printed text, is so selfless, and beautiful, and moving, as she welcomes her poor father after such a long period of abuse, and attempts to heal him, even dies for him, as her heart is broken at the sight of his wretched condition. The stage actress in this instance seemed to struggle with her lines and at times spoke harshly in the manner of her evil sisters, losing the lovely soft cadences for which Cordelia impresses. I especially love the words ‘remediate’ and 'aidant':
'All blest secrets,


All you unpublish'd virtues of the earth,

Spring with my tears! be aidant and remediate

In the good man's distress! Seek, seek for him;

Lest his ungovern'd rage dissolve the life

That wants the means to lead it.'


Lear’s Fool is another memorable presence in the play, but (she) was reduced to being merely a sideshow. It seemed they couldn’t make up their mind whether they wanted to use her or not.
The cast received lukewarm applause. I was sitting in the second or third row, and felt embarrassed for them, delivering such a great and vital play to an audience that was hardly appreciative. I imagine the audience felt, like me, that there were things to recommend the play, but ultimately it all collapsed, especially in the final act of the play. Here we had actors going through the motions, with a struggling Cordelia, an awkward Kent looking on at the proceedings, Edgar hovering uselessly in the background, Albany sitting in his silly wheelchair, and, sadly, Cordelia unsure of the delivery of her lines, telling he mother she loves her and feigning bewilderment at her mother’s tragic condition.

‘You do me wrong to take me out of the grave.

Thou art a soul in bliss

But I am bound upon a wheel of fire

That mine own tears do scald like molten lead.’

                   

NEW DIGS

OUR new digs are not going terribly well. We all feel a bit dislocated and would like to return to our waterlogged home as soon as it is fully ready, which seems to be taking some time.

We have a dishwasher that is unpredictable and washes some things clean, but leaves some things mysteriously mucky and greasy. It also makes incessant groaning sounds. The stove is a problem. The hotplate seems to get hot reasonably efficiently but the heat somehow fades and then some things are ready for dinner on time and others aren’t.

The water in the shower is a bit passive, and although it’s not exactly coming in drips, it isn’t a torrent either, and would please nobody, with the possible exception of the Australian Conservation Foundation.

The kitchen table is firm and sturdy, however there is a plate of glass on top, and sometimes water gets under the glass which makes it messy and difficult to clean.

It’s good, some might say, to have three television sets, and even better, some might say, to have Foxtel, however the ‘movie channel’ isn’t operative and we can only access Foxsports 1, 2, 3. To the uninitiated, this is the difference between watching regular games of AFL football with robust football discussion programmes, and watching boring rugby league matches, insignificant golf tournaments, and darts.

There are not enough plates to go around if we have visitors, and the bowls are too shallow. The frying pan seems to have been scrubbed with sharp fibres in the past, and there are only two saucepans. The plastic tongs have lost their spring, the coffee plunger leaks and offers only watery coffee, and the amount of available and necessary bench space is a sick joke.

The beds are too soft, sinking in the middle, and the sheets are too thin and cold. The trams shriek and clang as they go by outside during the night and the walls are so thin that normal children’s voices carry all the way along the corridor to the lifts. The lifts, by the way, are a problem because you can’t access other floors unless you swipe a little plastic card, which you invariably forget.

Apart from all of that, one could say the temporary digs are satisfactory for a small amount of time, but obviously not ideal for extended stays. It is difficult enough for two adults- add two small children into the mix and it’s a nightmare.

                                            

A PREMATURE END IN GIPPSLAND

LAKES ENTRANCE (FORMERLY KNOWN AS CUNNINGHAME)- mid July 2012

 DAY ONE

WE arrived not long after midday after a brief stop at Bairnsdale to purchase supplies and visit the Catholic Church (St Mary’s) which was shut.

Our lodgings for a week are atop the fourth floor of a modern and fashionable monstrosity on the edge of town, its westward side overlooking the great expanse of lake.

We walked along the Esplanade into town. Unremarkable shops mostly closed, being a Sunday. It is winter here, at the end of June and the start of July. It is not quite ghost-like in its out-of-season way, like I remember Scheveningen in Holland to be many years ago, or Port Isaac in Cornwall the same winter, or Glenelg in South Australia in more recent times. But quiet nonetheless with mostly empty pavements.

We walked as far as the long bridge and sat down on the hard ground about half way across and snacked with the kids. Presently we discovered the ‘ninety mile beach’ and watched as aggressive grey waves crashed in.

The long walk home along the west side of the Esplanade, along the lake’s edge, watching the myriad bobbing boats, the occasional pelican and diving sea birds.

DAY TWO

A typically late start and then a walk along the Esplanade. At the hotel, a lovely warm swim in the heated pool and then languorous tennis. Focus on football on Foxtel. Discovering poems in the latter part of the evening. ‘Born Yesterday’ by Phillip Larkin and ‘Sister Maude’ by Christina Rossetti among others.

DAY THREE

A long, lovely run, to the bridge and over it. Westward along the ninety mile beach about six km’s, the only thing spoiling it, the too soft sand- but utterly alone. Dark, mysterious water and moody skies. Rising briskly up the hill after the bridge, for the first full view of the sea, Mark Knopfler’s version of ‘Rocky’- ‘Coming Home- ’ from the ‘Local Hero’ soundtrack, booms out of the iPod. Then coming back, all loosed-limbed but weary, the Jet’s are claiming the streets in ‘West Side Story.’

DAY FOUR

We venture around the corner to the local museum to see old photographs of dazed looking Aboriginals, dressed in their best white clothes, doing an Easter Egg Hunt by the local shores. Rich and wise guardians of the poor bestraddle them. We find out that the huge motel we are staying at has always been a sore point for the locals; a large, ugly blot on their landscape.

We drive northward to lovely and opulent Metung, pristine boats tethered at the harbour, and a faint whiff of magical Cornwall in the air. Further inland is Bruthen, a very small town with a delicious bakery and about four or five shops. The local pub, nestled spectacularly on a hill overlooking beautiful green valleys and meadows, houses several photos of premiership football teams in their Footscray coloured jumpers. The Op shop is manned by two young schoolgirls whilst their mother is doing work at the back. One of them tells me something terrible happened at (primary) school in Bruthen recently- it makes her uneasy being there. The mother then saunters up and my antennae tells me to drop the subject. The first opportunity when the mother attends a new customer, I implore the child to tell me. I am expecting rape, paedophilia, suicide or murder. She tells me that someone dumped a whole lot of dead chickens on the school premises. The girls go to Bairnsdale for big school next year, and are excited, but would prefer to live in Melbourne. The mother wouldn’t, however. She grew up in Box Hill. In Bruthen, you can ride horses, fish and shoot. In Melbourne you would get arrested for this.

Back at Lakes Entrance, Aunty D has arrived, and we all play tennis, until dusk descends upon the court. Poetry again- ‘Manhunt’ by Simon Armitage, and ‘The Farmer’s Wife’ by Charlotte Mew- both interest me.

DAY 5

We are all agitated a bit earlier this time-cold sun is flooding the balcony adjacent to our room. There are four of us now, with the arrival of Aunty D, but the dynamic is more or less the same. She even manages to squeeze between the child seats in the back of the car, so we don’t become dislocated on our trip. The wife and her sister have this thing for Buchan, a small, pretty town somewhere out east. It’s a family tradition. They even dream outwardly about the prospects of owning property in this area. So it’s off to Buchan we go.

I drive 80 kmh all the way. As relaxed as you can be when driving along a highway, eyes on the rear vision mirror. It’s quiet on the winter roads. Still, I have to pull over occasionally to allow a more earnest vehicle to pull over. There are signs for Jindabyne. I think about the roadway tragedies that unfold in the film of the same name.


Buchan is a bit like the earlier Bruthen. The hills are green and they dip and dance about. Some of the hills are inhabited by sheep and baby lambs. However, whilst Buchan may lack a local football team like Bruthen, and a local post office and primary school, it more than makes up for its omissions with its famous caves.


We entered the Royal Caves with a guide and about fifty people. There were vast sea beds and customary stalactites and stalacmites, occasionally joining. I like the pencil thin straw-like stalactites emerging from the celings. We are told the formation has emerged over a period of thousands of years, maybe millions. I try to imagine what this vast subterranean world would have looked like then. It is an incredible phantasmagoria of foaming cream sheets of hard surfaces and glistening porcelain rock.

We emerge from the dimly lit caves into bright sunshine and kangaroos lazily reclining on the warm hillside. The Buchan Anglican church is small and lovely. There is modest stained glass and a detailed register of events. The café has a real fire and soup and a country feel that doesn’t quite match West Yorkshire in my heart, but is charming nevertheless.

DAY 6

Well, Day 6 has proved to be a disaster, as we have had a phone call from home telling us that there is water gushing out from under our home onto the streets.

I let some anxiety out by screaming from the balcony to a paddock two hundred metres away: ‘Get away! Move now! Get going!’ The children, a group of about ten of them, all flee, startled. You see, they are brandishing golf clubs and trying to decapitate the heads of bewildered swooping magpies.

Our relaxing trip has ended prematurely.

We are in the car in the dusk and late into the evening driving home to see what awaits. Dinner in Traralgon is awful. Fumbling with pizza whilst driving in the dark is not much fun.

At home, the floors are all wet. It has been caused by a broken pipe. Worse, it is hot water and there is considerable condensation dripping from the ceilings and the walls. The house is uninhabitable. Our holiday will end with emergency accommodation and dealing with insurance claims.

PAUL MCCARTNEY TURNED 70 THE OTHER DAY

GEORGE Harrison was probably my favourite Beatle when I first properly discovered the Beatles when I was in Year 10 at school. It might have been his surname, or the intriguing character that I envisaged. He seemed to be a bit more complicated than the others, with his advanced guitar playing and passion for the sitar.

Then, when I listened to the music with a more concentrated ear, it became John Lennon. The first time I ever wrote a serious diary entry was in December, 1980, when John Lennon was murdered. It happened in Melbourne mid-afternoon on a warm to hot day, a typical summer’s day. I was splashing in a pool with friends at a house about five blocks from where I grew up. I especially liked Linda and I was splashing her the most, when someone came outside to tell me that Lennon had been shot. I crawled out of the pool and sat by the radio, until his death was confirmed ten minutes later. I went home, sorrowfully, and wrote.

Even now I think that Lennon was probably the most talented member of the band. That is, his words and music are, for me, consistently more interesting and creative and more accomplished than the others. But Paul McCartney had his moments- plenty of them- and he only weakens in comparison to Lennon, but gifted in his own right. I guess it is a bit like saying Van Gogh was a better painter than Gauguin- but Gauguin was still an extraordinary painter!

I don’t know much about these things, but I’m told by a bass player friend that McCartney is an extraordinary bassist. We have to remember that all the great Lennon songs in the early days, like ‘Rain’ and ‘Girl’ and‘In My Life’ still had a generous helping hand by Paul which made them even better.

And then there are Paul’s own songs. There are those that are light and whimsical and probably don’t mean much, and would have infuriated John Lennon, and these I can’t be bothered with these days. I am thinking here of Desmond with his barrow in the marketplace, and the one about feeling the need to get up and dance to a song that was a hit before your mother was born, and the one where Rose and Valerie are screaming from the gallery and even the one which has Vera, Chuck and Dave sitting on their grandparent’s knee.

But when I think about the greatness in Paul McCartney, these songs are easier to find. And instantly recognizable. During his time with The Beatles, I never tire of 'Mother Nature's Son', 'I've Got A Feeling', 'Let It Be', 'Golden Slumbers', 'Here, There and Everywhere', the list goes on.

So I thank him for these songs and many others, and the joy in many of his solo/ Wings songs- great fun, probably drove John Lennon crazy, but nothing better than in the kitchen or in the car listening to great melodies about uncomplicated fun- see 'Jet', 'The Back Seat of my Car', and 'With a Little Luck' for a few examples.

And like great singers he is enigmatic too- like Jim Morrison, you could look at him all day. Watching 'Hey Jude' from the David Frost show countless times.

THE CHILDREN OF THE KING -young adult gothic-

SONYA Hartnett is a skilful writer. You can tell immediately when she evokes place so vividly, and she loves words like all good writers do. She is supposedly a ‘Young Adult’ writer, but older adults can learn a lot from her too. Maybe not with all her books- some seem to be written to be placed in the teenage imagination, and get fixed there- but others like the moving story about incest at a caravan park- ‘SLEEPING DOGS’- are so well written and challenging that anyone post- high school would find something in them.


                                




I think ‘THE CHILDREN OF THE KING’ is one of those. The Lockwood’s live in London and they have two teenage children- Cecily a bit silly and selfish is twelve- and Jeremy is a bit older at fourteen and romantic and desperate for adventure. The story is set during the London blitz, and Mr Lockwood stays at home whilst the rest of the family relocate away from the falling bombs to the lovely sounding ‘Heron Hall’, which belongs to Uncle Peregrine and his staff. The Lockwood’s are fabulously wealthy and it is a big house in the safe countryside with a lot of staff helping run it.



On the way to Heron Hall Cecily ‘adopts’ for her family a young evacuee called May Bright and she is the best character in the novel. She runs rings around Cecily who has to grow up in order to keep up with her. She is perfect for Cecily as a role model of selflessness and maturity. Hartnett loves May, you can tell, and as a result we do too.



A place close by with an even better name than ‘Heron Hall’ is ‘Snow Castle’ where the children venture for some excitement. The whole time they are at Heron Hall they have to make their own fun because school is out and there are no other families close by.



This is the part in the story where it becomes more intriguing and complicated. The children venture across two brothers who seem to be living amongst the ruins. They are young and prince-like in their appearance- not to mention ghostly and mysterious. At the same time we meet them, Uncle Peregrine offers his nightly instalments about the Duke and the King and Queen of long ago at the time of Richard III, and the boys trapped in the Tower of London. These night time stories take up a large section of the novel with the children entranced, and meanwhile in the day time the children are running off to Snow Castle. The parallels are supposed to be obvious.

                                           


Uncle Peregrine’s long tale about the power hungry Duke and the unfortunate boys kept hidden in the tower is well told and enjoyable. There is another incredible tale told in the novel, this time by Jeremy Lockwood who feels young and useless at Heron Hall, away from his father and the horrific war being waged in London. Jeremy escapes from his suffocating family one night and – this could be partly allegory, I’m not sure- as he tells his expectant audience later, he rescues several people from a bombed out street somewhere in London, who are lying in the rubble under the earth and being slowly engulfed by water.



May is lovely. Intelligent, brave and kind-hearted. Cecily improves, but don’t be fooled by her desire to ‘adopt’ May, the little evacuee near the beginning. She sees May at the evacuee centre sitting next to her suitcase, and is drawn to her silky hair, clean skin and doll-like features as if she is something that might be fun to play with. And that’s how she treats May until May stamps her independence and authority. Jeremy is ok but a bit too precocious for my liking. Besides Uncle Peregrine, the adults don’t fare too well, as they don’t in other Hartnett books, and Harry Potter for that matter.



I enjoyed the novel the most when the girls swept over the hillside and over the stream to visit the boys at Snow Castle. I wanted to know more about them and where they came from. Were they the ghosts of the boys locked in the Tower all those centuries ago?



Here is an example of why Sonya Hartnett can be a very good writer. The physicality of her description, and the imagination, is terrific. On the subject of the aftermath of bombing on a building in a London street:



‘The rubble is ugly. It’s made of chunks of brick, a trillion chips of glass, smashed and splintered timber. All this sprawls over the road, into the gutters, heaps against its neighbours. Caught in the mess is furniture, carpet, birdcages, pots and pans, chests of drawers filled with clothes. Stinking dust floats everywhere, and the dirt ripped up by the impact is thrown over everything. And where the building once stood there’s an odd empty space, and light touches what it never touched before, and sparrows hop along towel rails, and dogs walk on roofs.’


                         

The eclectic early films of Catherine Deneuve

I HAVE revisited, of late, some Catherine Deneuve films and found it interesting to compare some major roles she undertook at the beginning of her career. I guess I have seen five or six of her films. Four good early ones are the fabulous ‘Umbrellas of Cherbourg’ (1964), ‘Repulsion’ (1965), ‘The Young Girls of Rochefort’ (1967) and Belle De Jour (also 1967).




‘The Umbrellas of Cherbourg’ was her first major role. She was about 21. She plays Genevieve, the daughter of a widow. The two together run an umbrella shop. Genevieve has fallen in love with a young handsome man called Guy who, the morning after they consummate their relationship, has to leave for military service and is off the scene for a good deal of time. Genevieve is pregnant and, according to her mother, she needs a husband. This man will be a rich jewel merchant. It is difficult to know whether or not she is happily married. But the beautiful idea of Romeo and Juliet being created earlier has now dissipated. You do get the feeling of something ideal and romantic being destroyed.

When Guy comes home after finishing his service, there is no Genevieve and her mother and their umbrella shop. Bitter, he turns to drink and prostitutes, before settling on the love of his mother’s young nurse. His mother subsequently dies, and Guy’s life changes for the better when he discovers this unexpected love for Madeleine.

At the end of the film there is a beautifully wrought scene in which Guy and Genevieve see each other again after a long period of absence. She comes unwittingly to his petrol station. His wife and his little boy, Francois, depart to go out shopping. They are clearly content, a beautiful restful peace exists between them. Genevieve is outside. She has her little girl, Francoise, and her expensive fur and shiny black car. There is something wistful, regretful perhaps, in her demeanour. It is a sad moment when they talk again, guarded and a little distant. It makes us think about what could have been if their stars aligned better. We are reminded about how beautiful and romantic they were together.

Catherine Deneuve is spectacularly beautiful, pale and tall and blonde and girlish and innocent initially, and at the end of the film experienced and wistful. It is a good performance in a great film. She dominates each frame and the director, Jaques Demy, uses close up reasonably regularly to please his audience. In one scene, imagining marriage, Genevieve sits in her umbrella shop like a princess, resplendent with crown, and she is utterly absorbing. I like her as the young, impressionable, flighty and breathless young woman- less as the proud, wealthy aristocrat with the high fur collar.



A year or so later Catherine Deneuve plays Carol, a French woman living in London, in a black and white Polanski ‘horror’ film called ‘Repulsion’, menacing and unsettling- an incredible departure. Polanski, like Demy before him, loves looking at Deneuve. She spends most of the film in a partially see through nightie. In one scene she lays sprawled on the floor on her stomach, a sheet covering only the top half of her body to her hips.

Carol has a mental illness that becomes more severe as the film goes on. A photograph featured at the start and at the end of the film (it reminds me of a shot of a photograph in ‘The Shining’), is suggestive of a disturbance of some kind. As a young girl she has the look of unspeakable terror- some alien force seems to have interfered with her universe from a very young age. As the film plays out, we begin to think the force may have been a malevolent male, such is Carol’s abhorrence of all males, from the creepy, predatory landlord who sees his chance when she is completely vulnerable; to the flashy and egocentric ‘brother-in-law’ who flirts with her and unsettles her with his leering attitude, to the generally ‘nice’ wannabe boyfriend who is desperate to kiss Carol and is absolutely frustrated at her lack of response.

Carol kills men. She is absolutely psychotic. Even the smell of a used singlet or the sight of a shaving brush is enough to make her nauseous. And no-one, unsurprisingly, quite understands her. She has awful dreams of being violated in her own bed. Polanski springs these events on us unsuspectingly. The walls crack at regular intervals, a reflection of her deteriorating mind. ‘Repulsion’ is a good film, but not a great one. Polanski made it as a ‘bridge’ film like the Coen brothers sometimes do- to make money to finance something better and more heartfelt. Nevertheless it is still, in 2012, intriguing and unsettling viewing. And the homage to Alfred Hitchcock’s ‘Psycho’ is huge, at times maybe even plagiarism. See the opening credits as an example, and the work in the enigmatic bathroom.

‘Repulsion’ is interesting from a Catherine Denueve point of view because Carol is such a departure from sweet Genevieve. Polanski continues the voyeuristic mode of Demy- even more so- but Carol is such a dark, troubled figure, almost as if Deneuve was crying out not to be typecast in what some would see earlier as a whimsical musical. There’s nothing gothic about ‘The Umbrellas of Cherbourg’- but ‘Repulsion’, mostly set in a disturbing unit where all manner of evil takes place, is pure London Gothic. He has always had good ideas for apartment interiors.



So with ‘Cherbourg’, in ‘63/’64, then ‘Repulsion’ in ’65, Catherine Deneuve appears in ‘The Young Girls of Rochefort’ (’67), infectious, fun, even more of a musical, and seemingly pure whimsy. Gone is dark Carol, and we have a return to a Genevieve of a kind, however a bit more wordly-wise without the sadness. Deneuve this time is Delphine, acting with her real life soon to be deceased sister, Francoise Dorleac, being chased across the main square of Rochefort and teaching ballet and singing charming songs. This time, instead of an umbrella shop, mother runs a café where different characters drop on at will. It is Demy again, and lots and lots of singing and music, although this time the words are spoken. There is love and heartbreak as you would expect, but the tone is decidedly more relaxed and fun than ‘Cherbourg’, and as a result more easily forgettable.



Remarkably, Deneuve’s very next film was ‘Belle De Jour’, also ’67, and this time all whimsy has gone with her role as Severine Serizy, a prostitute by day as her unknowing surgeon husband is at work. Severine’s subconscious is filled with dreams about sadomasochism and bondage, while in her wakened hours she is unable to partake in physical intimacy with her husband- only, (very reluctantly at first it must be admitted) - with her clients at the brothel. This film deals with dark secrets, gangsters, murder, and it has to be said, the kind of leering men that inhabited ‘Repulsion’. But Severine is a very different creature to Carol and the other people she inhabits in her films around this time. There is something mysterious and hidden about her. Luis Bunuel, as director, treats her in a different way to these other directors. But she is still a kind of image of worship for those around her, and undoubtedly so for her audience as well. Some of the brothel scenes are quite frank, and Severine wears fashionable underwear in these scenes. Far more than the other films, fashion seems to be at the forefront. She wears fabulous dresses and fabulous shoes and accessories. A beautiful black hat. I’m not personally into fashion, but I am guessing that this film has had a huge impact on what was seen as chic and fashionable around the world. As far as the plot is concerned, it interested me less than these other films, although it was, it seems, meticulously made.

So bravo for Catherine Deneuve for taking so many risks and taking on so many challenges. And bravo to her directors for having the foresight to see her as something complicated, much more than a princess in an umbrella shop or a dancer and music teacher being chased across French boulevards. I don’t think she is or was ever a Liv Ullman or even perhaps a Jane Fonda, but interesting nevertheless and mesmerising for many close-up on the screen.

The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne: a Belfast Spinster

I CAN’T remember where I first heard about Brian Moore’s ‘The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne.’ If you read three or four fairly crummy or forgettable novels, then come across something as good as this as your fourth or fifth it is well worth it.

Judith Hearne is a lonely spinster who has spent a good deal of her life loyally looking after a sick aunt. Now she finds herself getting on in age and living in a series of bedsits in Belfast, each one as unsatisfactory for some reason as the last. Her co-inhabitants in this one include a memorably obese and troubled man named Bernie (fantastically described as a ‘monstrous baby swelled to man size’) who lives with the delusion of being a great poet and isn’t working and left Queen’s some years ago, his mother, Mrs Henry Rice, who means well but sickeningly fawns over him (she says he is ‘a little delicate’),  Bernie’s unfortunate secret lover, Mary, who is the bedsit cleaner and a victim throughout the novel one way or another, and Mr James Madden, a pretentious man who has lived in America, and is not who he at first seems, and is the unwanted object of Judith Hearne’s desire- her last chance, it seems, to become married and respected in a lonely and desperate world. Judith Hearne’s only escape from her problems are both desperate measures- the bottle, and her Sunday visits to Moira O’Neill and her put upon family.

This novel, written in 1955, is bold, full of passion and is excitingly unpredictable. Judith Hearne’s slide from a dull, predictable God-fearing spinster, into a pathetic, drunken non-believer is remarkable, and tragic.

From page one, Judith Hearne holds onto her items of security- a photograph of her aunt, who gave her a reason for living until she died, and what she calls ‘the Sacred Heart’, wrapped initially in tissue paper, and now hung proudly on her wall for comfort and prayer. Many of us have a wall hanging for this very reason, whether it be a photo of a relative, a simple beach scene, or a picture of a famous singer or sports star. There is so much about Judith Hearne that is so ordinary and believable, and typical for her age, at least in this early part of the novel.

Judith is soon flattered and excited when another boarder- James Madden- shows an interest in her. She seems to be the only one receptive to his boastful stories about living in New York. Madden can sense this and soon has Judith enthralled. They begin to have walks together where the discussion is always about America -‘the States is a hundred years ahead of Europe in most things.’ The other boarders are amusingly disparaging about America- ‘The atom bomb-that’s the American contribution to Western civilisation. Am I right?’ but Judith always defends him.

In a passage that is reminiscent of Fitzgerald writing about Gatsby’s past, we get to know Madden better and how his own dream, like Gatsby, is to open up a new promising world for himself- ‘..he stood at the gateway to all the things he had left behind, all the things he had ever done.’

By the end of the third chapter we see a glimpse of Madden that Judith will never see. Coming back to the bedsit, drunk one night, his passion is aroused at the sight of naked Mary with Bernie in Bernie’s bedroom. Madden, seemingly disgusted at the goings on in a Catholic home, threatens to tell Bernie’s mother (which would see Mary is immediately evicted), but loses his head like a madman and rips the blanket from her and fondles her and smacks her bare thighs. As Bernie says, if alone, Madden may well have raped her. Brian Moore’s characters have all the problems of the world but his depictions of them are searingly honest.

It is the interior mind of these characters that is the most compelling. Moore exposes their thoughts continually, and it completely gives them away. We get glimpses into Judith’s fascination with Madden- ‘I wonder if he’s old? Over fifty certainly..’ and at the same time Madden is musing about Mary- ‘ahh, I’m no good, drinking like that, pulling at that kid, but she was old enough though, what a build. Christ…why did I think that right n the church, an impure and filthy thought right in God’s house.’

Father Quigley is the priest at the church that Judith attends. Brian Moore became an atheist after a heavy and devout Catholic upbringing- as an act of rebellion he joined the British Army when he left Belfast- and his Father Quigley is passionate, but is also a target of Moore’s ridicule- ‘Plenty of money! Plenty of time!..Yes the people of this parish have both of these things…But they don’t have it for their Church!..They’ve got time for sin, time for naked dancing girls in the cinema, time to get drunk…time to go to see the football matches… time to spend in beauty parlours..time to go to foreign dances instead of ceilidhes (!)..time to do any blessed thing you could care to mention. Except one. They-don’t-have-time-for-God.’

When Judith sees the patient O’Neill’s she begins to boast about her new, fabulously interesting life as an acquaintance and sometime walking partner and church attendee James Madden, and she is starting to have too much to drink. It is shortly after this that James Madden makes his proposal. He wants to start up an American eating house/ café in Dublin, and he needs Judith to be his partner purely and solely in business terms- Madden is under the misapprehension that she has money. Sadly, tragically, cruelly, when he finds out he is mistaken, he will abandon his plans with her, and cut off his once expedient social ties, and dump her, claiming that if she felt his intentions were otherwise, and if she got her hopes up, then it was all her imagination, and no fault of his own.

Bang smack in the middle of all this, in chapter 9, Moore gives us a diary entry of each of four boarders on the topic of Madden and Judith Hearne. He is absolutely fascinated by the inner going on of a person’s mind, and it is a fascinating subject. And the purpose of it all is for us to boldly see that everyone one of these boarders, Bernie and Mary included, can see right through Madden and his little schemes, and here is poor, sad Judith, hopeful and blinded because of her desperate hope of salvation from an untrustworthy Yank.

When Madden, becoming a more grotesque character by the minute, visits Mary in the middle of the night, aroused because he saw her ‘short slip, white creamy legs’ going up the stairs, he finds her in her bed in the dark and, Moore tells us, ‘tore and shook her like a dog at meat.’ It reminded me a little of what a poor, very young Maya Angelou went through- ‘easy, easy, be nice, be nice…’

Madden suddenly goes cold on Judy Hearne- perhaps he knows she isn’t loaded after all, and would make a useless business connection Judy meanwhile is becoming anxious, desperate, knowing at heart her last chance is slipping… and now taking to the bottle and singing like Blanche Du Bois too loud and causing a stir. He tells her flatly one lovely day in Belfast when she pressures very firm for an answer- ‘Who said anything about getting married? Did I? I never even considered it.’ There is a sort of Joycean stream-of-consciousness thing happening straight after in a long passage without any paragraphs and full stops- poor Judy’s thoughts tumbling out at a rate of knots. Church sermon is not much help- it’s back to the O’Neil’s I’m afraid, and a tall story seeping out- ‘As a matter of fact, he proposed to me’ (!)

On the bus Judy’s disintegration is continuing, noticeably shaking, trembling on the way to an illegal after hour’s public house. A sad and shocking thing to see her receiving a brown paper bag with a cheap bottle of whiskey inside and then Bernard waiting for her back at the bedsit to cruelly fill her ears with the notion that she needs to keep pursuing Madden because really loves her…vile characters in this story! High drama follows when Bernard’s mother comes on the screen with Madden. Madden finds out Bernie’s lies about Judy and then Bernie’s mother finds out about Bernie and sixteen year old Mary.

Judy is evicted and her reflex action is to see Father Quigly in church and ask why. Poor Judy doesn’t get any comforting response- or any that, by this stage, have any mean g for her. ­Five Hail Mary’s has lost all meaning for her. ‘An unhelpful  God. Why does He make men suffer?’ Like many before her and since, Mary is pleading for a sign.

Mary books herself, incredulously, into the Plaza Hotel and continues her drinking. It seems she will simply end up, like Dylan Thomas, sliding into oblivion. There is a final, pitiful excursion to the O’Neil’s. Any faint remnant of respectability is gone when Judy begins sobbing and begins a Blanche type rant about being left on the shelf, about drinking too much and about losing her faith. ‘Nobody wants me, Moira. I’m too old. And I’m too ugly.’ Moira O’Neill plays the pacifying Stella Kowalski type role perfectly. And what to make of Judy, weeping in front of such respectable company. Nothing but pity. She is an awful, pitiable sight. But what a wreck and how sad for her, for anybody who feels so alone and unwanted and desperate.  We can all turn out like this, anyone at anytime, it just takes a cruel twist of fate.

Moore is really wound  up now. He really has Judy, and the reader, exactly where he wants them. He wants to explore this lunatic woman even more closely and with even more scrutiny. Judy is very much at the stage of relying on the kindness of strangers. Tennessee Williams would be loving it, and Carson McCullers, and William Faulkner- in fact all those Southern writers, and James Joyce for that matter with Nora on his knee.

Back in church, Judy is drunkenly asking Quigley ‘are you sure he’s there?’ she becomes obsessed with the tabernacle and what is really there. ‘Is it just bread?’ she spies the ‘little white curtain that screened the tabernacle door.’ Judy does a terrible thing in her terrible state. She opens the Communion rail and tries to scrabble open the ‘golden door’- very cinematic this, with Quigley in pursuit running down the aisle- she is dragging on the door until there is blood running from her nails- but it will not budge!

Finally, inevitably, like Blanche at last, Judy has become the sick woman with nurses at her side, and now referred to as the ‘sick lady’, now almost Judy Hearne no more. She is placed by Moira O’Neill (Stella Kowalski) in a private room for convalescence. A new place and a new, altered Judy, hopeful of being discharged some day, but perhaps at peace wishing for the Sacred Heart to be place above her bed again.