Author Archives: aides memoires

Persona (1966)

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Director Ingmar Bergman with Bibi Andersson and Liv Ullman

Hmmm. At the point where the camera shifts from Elisabet to Alma so that the audience has to listen to the latter’s purported account of the birth of Elisabet’s son for a second time, I lost all interest and patience. There are so many – possible – themes: identity, truth, secrets, sex, atrocities, love and rejection, a hint of vampirism (?) . . . that I could get no handle on it and was bored. Give me one or two themes in a film, but don’t overwhelm me with them otherwise I will look away and turn to words as a more appropriate form of expression. It looks wonderful – how could it not, with two beautiful, stylish women who resemble each other and are filmed so cleverly? The occasional breaking-up of the physical film comes over like the expression of a scream – and reminds you that it’s only a film. But, oh, it was so obscure and self-referential that I wanted to scream myself before the end.

Up there with Last Year in Marienbad as a film that was a chore to sit through to the end.

The Piano (1992)

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Director Jane Campion with Holly Hunter, Harvey Keitel, Sam Neill

A sensual, shocking film filled with intriguing painterly images from the start: pink sunshine coming through fingers. The sensuousness of a hole in a stocking (“A sweet disorder in the dress. . .”). Who cares if it’s feasible to spend a night on a windswept beach in the shelter of a crinoline cage – it was true within the framing of this film. The most mind-blowing and heart-breaking image was of Ada’s crinoline sinking into the mud as she collapsed after her husband’s revenge. Shades even of the death of the Wicked Witch of the West. Perhaps not the allusion the director intended, although, on reflection, there is something traditionally witch-like about Ada’s blacks and unyielding expression.

It’s about an electively mute woman, her daughter and her piano, through which she communicates and speaks to he who has ears to hear. So much is unspoken in the film: why did she stop speaking at the age her daughter is now? The little girl is a tremendous talker – but so much of what she says are made-up stories. Perhaps muteness is a way to be true and utter no lies. Love and desire in this film certainly grow without the need for words – and there are dreadful consequences in putting feelings into words that can be read by the wrong eyes.

It’s one of those films that make you think about the inequitable agency/choice (as far as it was possible for anyone) for women of previous eras. Ada’s prickly will is her armour, as her music is her amour. She allows her will to be drowned but her music in future will always have a metallic ring. Perhaps that counts as a happy ending.

Arnside

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A walk from Arnside to Silverdale stations – quite a lot of it along the beach into drizzly wind and bits on very slippery limestone. Not great – but I’d watched “The Piano” the previous evening and amused myself by recreating the beach scenes as I walked along.

Staithes

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We caught the bus to Staithes and arrived at 9 a.m. I had thought that a bit early, but it was actually sensible. Staithes is so picturesque – and this is the holiday season after all – that it quickly began to get busy. At the end of the nineteenth century it was popular with plein air artists, known as the Staithes School. Laura Knight lived here for a number of years both before and after her marriage, learning her trade and often burning her drawings to keep warm.

And then the long walk along the coast into a headwind back to Saltburn. En route we passed Boulby mine, which is not just a mine but also an underground laboratory. I shall think of it as a British mini-CERN.

The Horse’s Mouth by Joyce Cary (1944)

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Well, I finally finished it – sometimes devouring it, sometimes picking at it. It’s a brilliant and repellent novel: the world seen through the eyes and thoughts of Gulley Jimson, a lying, thieving artist not averse to a bit of GBH. (I’m tempted to re-read “Herself Surprised” just to hear Sara’s voice.) He sees the world as a vast canvas for his brush: the opening scene where he paints with words the sun “like an orange in a fried fish shop” is just the start. Something exotic and startling in a mundane world. Nothing is unnoticed in Jimson’s world, just like Blake’s – whose long quotations I skimmed over unapologetically. Jimson + Blake = indigestion for this reader.

But the mass pile-up of words and images and thoughts and emotions (many of them fairly basic) grip and repulse you. There’s something about Jimson’s zest for life – and for re-creating that life on canvas (or on a soon-to-be-demolished wall) – that captures you and makes you feel like a purse-lipped killjoy for recollecting that the “tap” that broke Sara’s nose is actually called domestic violence these days, or that handing over pawn tickets to someone for the items of his that you’ve hocked is actually theft.

Bishop Auckland

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It finally filtered through to me mid-morning that there are regular direct trains between Saltburn and Bishop Auckland. Obviously I had seen the words “Bishop Auckland” on the departure boards before today, but they hadn’t penetrated through to whatever control room in my head plans my days and plots my course through life. So Bishop Auckland and a visit to the Spanish Gallery it was.

Flashing police lights at Newton Aycliffe reminded me of the street violence in recent days, and as I walked from Bishop Auckland station through the town I wondered if that town had suffered from it. No: the smashed windows at the empty Beales pre-date recent events. That’s just Bishop Auckland for you (sadly for BA). The occasional boarded-up windows and pulled-down shutters today, though, were different: the town has been on high alert for a couple of days and several businesses (including the Spanish Gallery) were closing early. All I saw were a couple of boys on bikes, obviously excited and buzzing with anticipation: anything to liven up the long school holidays. Otherwise people commented to each other how quiet it all was.

But to the Spanish Gallery. I know very little about Spanish art; my curiosity had been piqued by my recent visit to the John Singer Sargent exhibition and the information that he had been influenced by the sombre palette of Velasquez. There was in fact a painting by Sargent – a simple (but gruesome) image of a crucifixion. There was, inevitably, a lot of religious art which all blurred into one mass. My only takeaway was a quizzical thought about the many versions of a rather under-dressed penitent Magdalene. There’s an El Greco of Christ on the cross, most notable for the dizziness caused by looking at the background for too long. My first steal was attributed to a Frenchman long resident in Spain: Claude Vignon’s Saint Ambrose. (Not sure how secure that attribution is.) I also found out a little about Seville – a place I may be visiting in December – and its significance in Spanish art history.

The whole Bishop Auckland Project is the brainchild of one man: Jonathan Ruffer, unimaginably rich but committed to offloading some of his fortune in an inspiring way. (While writing all the labels for the gallery.) Since reading about the Pease family – and Henry Pease in particular who set the ball rolling on Saltburn as a holiday resort – I have been thinking about the mountains that one man can cause to be moved. Every town has some notable Victorian or Edwardian building or park provided by a local boy grown fat on local (and his own) industry. Bradford art gallery, Southport art gallery . . . so many donations by a successful man to his home town. Nowadays such things are generally done by committees, but occasionally – like here – one person can still make a difference (and not in an Elon Musk way). The difficulty is in regenerating and redirecting rather than creating on a blank canvas: reversing the path that leads to smashed windows in a derelict department store.